Minnesota has its eye set on becoming home to Amazon’s second corporate headquarters and efforts to lure the online retail giant seem to be picking up steam, according to a…
New data shows that, on jobs, Minnesota's metropolitan areas are losing ground relative to their neighbors
New figures from the Bureau of Economic Analysis show that, in the second quarter of 2017, Minnesota performed poorly on wages, well on dividends, slightly worse than average on transfer…
We often hear that there is a labor shortage in Minnesota which we need immigrants to solve. But we can make a start by helping teenage and black Minnesotans into…
My wife Diane and I have just moved, after 25 years, from Minneapolis to Eden Prairie. Early on I needed to hire a painter to do a modest amount of…
Rising wages are a good thing when, like Target's, they come from market forces and the competition between firms for labor.
Public sector employers will be a prime target as activists seek to spread Minneapolis' job killing $15 minimum wage. That's because, unlike private sector employers, they have no bottom line…
Compared to their neighbors and peers, Minnesota's urban areas are performing indifferently on economic growth.
Having damaged the low wage labor market in Minneapolis, $15 activists now have to pursue employers and jobs into neighboring areas, starting with St Paul. But the economics remain the…
Productivity drives earnings. Arguments that it doesn't are based on the selection of poor variables, incomplete data, and misleading measures of inflation.
Minnesota's rate of job growth has been ahead of the national average over the last year. But those new jobs have been concentrated in less productive sectors of the economy.
Many Minnesotans are quick to believe the North Star State’s economic performance is well above the norm. Unfortunately, Minnesota’s economy has been mediocre, at best, for some time. Public policies…
New research shows that higher minimum wages lead to more automation.
The phrase 'A fair day's wage for a fair day's work' has a long history. From an economic standpoint, the maxim ought to be a fair day's wage for a fair day's production.
New research shows that it isn't intra-state competition that has been driving capital taxes down, but changes in tax rates and input costs abroad, U.S. macroeconomic conditions, the capital income share,…
As its population ages, Minnesota needs a more productive labor force more than it needs a larger one
John Phelan wrote here about Amazon’s plan to develop a second corporate headquarters that will employ 50,000 people with average incomes of more than $100,000. Governor Dayton has vowed to…
Gov. Dayton's offer to Amazon is likely to include tax breaks. If so, that would be an admission that low tax rates attract business.
The much vaunted 'labor shortage' need not be a problem if we have sufficient investment and innovation to make the workers who remain more productive
Another multi-national corporation has fallen in line with Facebook, Twitter and Google, admonishing the Federal Communications Commission to drop plans to deregulate the internet. Apple has come out in favor…
Hurricane Harvey is and continues to be a human tragedy. Particularly in the regions affected, it will be an economic one as well.
It was not labor but invention and innovation that created the wealth which allows us to work less and our kids not at all. How about we have a day…
It’s almost Labor Day, perfect timing to overturn one of President Obama’s most counterproductive policies. Obama essentially rolled back the requirement for welfare recipients to get a job that had…
The private sector can play a big part in alleviating the suffering of Hurricane Harvey's victims. It shouldn't be stopped from doing so by armchair moralists