St Paul, MN (KROC AM News) - Minnesota’s seasonally adjusted unemployment rate has remained below 4 percent since June 2014.

The rate for January was 3.7 percent, the same as the previous two months. The monthly rate has been at 3.6 or 3.7 percent since January 2015. The Minnesota Department of Employment and Economic Development (DEED) says 5,000 jobs were eliminated during January. The department says there was a gain of nearly 40,000 jobs between January 2015 and January this year for a growth rate of 1.4 percent.

“Despite job losses in January, the state labor market remains on a growth track, with eight of the 11 major industrial sectors adding jobs over the past year,” said DEED Commissioner Katie Clark Sieben.

DEED Commissioner Katie Clark Sieben
DEED Commissioner Katie Clark Sieben
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. “The state’s labor force participation rate of 70.5 percent is now at a three-year high.”

 

Education and health services led all sectors in January with 3,000 new jobs. Construction (up 1,900) and leisure and hospitality (up 900) also gained jobs.

Along with government, other sectors that reduced employment during the month were trade, transportation and utilities (down 2,100), information (down 1,800), professional and business services (down 1,600), manufacturing (down 900), other services (down 300), financial activities (down 200), and logging and mining (down 100).

Over the past year, the following sectors gained jobs: education and health services (up 16,719), leisure and hospitality (up 6,373), trade, transportation and utilities (up 6,040), construction (up 4,699), financial activities (up 3,242), other services (up 2,875), professional and business services (up 1,517) and government (up 542).

Sectors that lost jobs over the past year were logging and mining (down 1,255), information (down 832) and manufacturing (down 4).

In the Metropolitan Statistical Areas, the following regions gained jobs in the past 12 months: Minneapolis-St. Paul MSA (up 1.8 percent), Rochester MSA (up 2.5 percent), St. Cloud MSA (up 2.4 percent) and Mankato MSA (up 1.9 percent). The Duluth-Superior MSA was down 1.8 percent.

DEED also announced revised job figures from the previous two years based on updated data from the federal Bureau of Labor Statistics. Those figures indicate Minnesota gained nearly 15,000 more jobs than originally reported from December 2013 to December 2014. The state, however, gained about 12,000 fewer jobs than originally reported between December 2014 and December 2015.

Those adjustments and other factors resulted in a revised unemployment rate of 3.7 percent in December 2015, rather than the 3.5 percent rate that was originally reported.

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