Gov. Walz celebrates 36,000 new jobs in Minnesota over the last year: 59% were ‘Government’ jobs
On Tuesday, I wrote that:
The Bureau of Labor Statistics’ (BLS) Establishment survey, which is part of its Current Employment Statistics (CES) survey, shows an increase of 6,300 in the Total Nonfarm jobs from August to September.
Gov. Walz was quick to celebrate this news:
Indeed, it is true that BLS numbers show an increase of 35,800 Total Nonfarm jobs between September 2023 and September 2024.
But where have those jobs been generated?
The BLS breaks its estimates of Total Nonfarm jobs down by sector and one of these is titled “Government.” This data show that the total number of Government jobs in Minnesota increased by 21,000 between September 2023 and September 2024, or 59% of those 35,800 new jobs the governor likes to boast about.
Indeed, if we subtract these Government jobs from the Nonfarm total, we see that since June 2023, the number of new non-Government jobs in Minnesota has been more or less stagnant; up 0.4% or 11,300 new jobs. Over the same period, by contrast, the number of Government jobs in our state has swollen by 26,100 — 6.2% — or 70% of new Total Nonfarm jobs, as Figure 1 shows. In other words, for every non-Government job added in Minnesota since June 2023, 2.3 Government jobs have been added.
Figure 1: % change in jobs in Minnesota, June 2023=100
In the months when Minnesota posts good jobs numbers, you will often hear someone — often our governor — say that this shows how attractive our state is to businesses. Obviously, when two-thirds of those jobs are created not by businesses but by the government, it shows no such thing. As I wrote on Tuesday, if you look beneath the headlines, the news is not so good.