More Minnesotans are getting back into the workforce. But the state’s labor force participation rate may never be what it once was.

More Minnesotans are getting back into the workforce. But the state’s labor force participation rate may never be what it once was. Main Photo

23 Mar 2022


This month’s jobs report for Minnesota brought some good news: the state’s labor force participation rate was up, to 67.6 percent in January, according to the latest update from the Bureau of Labor Statistics.

Unemployment is down, too, to the lowest it’s been in a very long time, at 2.9 percent. But that can be a little misleading in the current economy, because it doesn’t include people who have dropped out of the workforce and aren’t working or actively looking for work.

By contrast, the labor force participation rate measures the share of the population 16 and up that is either working or actively looking for work. Because it includes all the non-institutionalized adults in the economy, it says more about the share of the population working than the regular unemployment rate.

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