Data released yesterday by the Department of Employment and Economic Development show that “Total Nonfarm Employment” in Minnesota declined by 4,400 from June to July. This is the largest decline since July 2023 and wiped out job gains since April.
Some may find solace below those headline numbers. Of the 4,400 jobs lost, just 500 were in the private sector: 3,900 — 88.6% — were in “Government,” as Figure 1 shows.
Figure 1: Minnesota’s June to July 2025 job losses
But not so fast, my shrink-the-government friends. If we break down those private sector job losses by sector, as we do in Figure 2, we see that, stripping out “Educational & Health Services” which added 5,400 jobs, there was a net loss of 5,900 private sector jobs, with every sector except “Construction” seeing declines.
Figure 2: Minnesota’s private sector job gains/losses by sector, June to July 2025
This matters because, as I’ve noted previously, in economic terms, this is a sector with relatively low levels of Gross Domestic Product (GDP) per job. In other words, adding jobs here rather than in some other sector with a higher GDP per job ratio will, all else being equal, act to lower GDP per worker or per capita in Minnesota. Given that we are already below the national average on the latter, this would not be good.
