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RTT’s Erin Olson Teams Up With Minnesota Compass
This past month, RealTime Talent research strategist Erin Olson had the opportunity to collaborate with Minnesota Compass’ research scientist Justin Hollis to author an article focusing on Minnesota’s workforce shortage. The article highlights the early warning signs found in high job vacancies around 2016 as well as the potential ways our state could chip away at this shortage. This article, along with other great content from Minnesota Compass can be found HERE.
Minnesota Compass is a social indicators project that measures progress in our state and its communities. Led by Wilder Research, Minnesota Compass provides nonpartisan, credible information and tracks trends in topic areas such as education, economy, workforce, health, housing, and a host of others.
Top Trending Entry-Level Healthcare Positions Focus on In-Home Care
It’s no secret that there is huge demand for Home Health Aides across the United States. The Bureau of Labor Statistics put out a report early last year, and the Minnesota Department of Employment and Economic Development (DEED) followed suit in June 2016 with their article, “H is for Home Health Aide.” But will these positions be attractive to future workers who will have increasingly more choice in our nation’s job market and are looking for opportunities that offer a living wage and professional advancement? Maybe not, unless employers start changing what they offer.
As many Minnesotans age and require additional medical attention (the population of Minnesotans over 65 years of age will increase by more than 400,000 people between 2014 and 2024), the need for Healthcare Support Professionals is increasing rapidly. Couple that with a growing preference to receive care in the home rather than in a care facility, the demand for Home Health Aides is skyrocketing. In 2016, there were approximately 27,550 Home Health Aides working in the state and 4,457 Home Health Aide job openings advertised online; the occupation ranks as the 21st most in-demand position and the 20th most common occupation in Minnesota today. Demand is projected to grow by 30.1 percent (9,254 jobs) between 2014 and 2024–the third highest growth rate of any occupation in Minnesota. However, these positions offer some of the lowest salaries of any occupation in the healthcare industry, with a median wage of $24,944 and currently advertised positions only offering $20-26k as a starting salary–just barely hitting the threshold for a living wage for a single adult ($11.39 in Hennepin County). There may be little incentive to encourage workers to take on these roles as the number of job opportunities begins to exceed the number of available workers in the laborforce.
We are already observing high rates of job vacancies in entry-level healthcare positions that require an Associate’s degree or less. Online job postings in the Twin Cities Metro for low-experience, low-education Licensed Practical Nurses and Home Health Aides have increased more than 7% since 2015, dramatically greater than other entry-level healthcare opportunities. Hennepin County was home to 24% of the state’s total entry-level healthcare positions in 2016.
As Minnesota continues to face changing demographics, how will employers respond to ensure that they attract the candidates they need? Hopefully, we will start to see rising wages for entry-level healthcare positions.
For more data on healthcare occupations at the Twin Cities and Statewide level, check out our reports page.
2016 Trends in Hiring in the Twin Cities Metro
In the Twin Cities, the workforce is mobile. Although differences exist between the candidate pools and job opportunities found in each of the metro’s seven counties, there are more similarities than differences.
Metro employers continue to seek out candidates with a strong foundation in soft skills including communication, attention to detail, problem solving, and customer service. Information Technology is the top job function area in demand in the metro area, with a particular focus around business information management, healthcare IT, and cybersecurity in finance IT.
For more details on the booming job market in the Twin Cities Metro, take a look at our recent report or the summary slides linked below.
Feature in Twin Cities Business Mag: MHTA Rolls Out New Skills-Focused Job Board
RealTime Talent’s newest platform, the Exchange, was featured in Twin Cities Business Magazine this week in a story highlighting the Minnesota High Tech Association’s new site. The story was picked up at MHTA’s Tech.2017 breakfast which was held at the Metropolitan Ballroom last week and drew around 200 leaders in high tech innovation. Featured in the article are insights from Margaret Anderson Kelliher, President and CEO of MHTA, and WorkFountain’s Program Manager for Minnesota, Dave Kornecki.
The full article by Andrew Eggert can be read on the Twin Cities Business Magazine website at: http://tcbmag.com/News/Recent-News/2017/February/MHTA-Rolls-Out-New-Skills-Focused-Job-Board
The RealTime Talent Exchange Network Grows
This month, four organizations launched branded portals of the RealTime Talent Exchange. Ranging from trade and employer associations to local economic development corporations and chambers of commerce, these additions to our network of platforms signal that Minnesota businesses have a big interest recruiting talent differently.
The RealTime Talent Exchange is a cutting-edge web-based job platform that away from resumes, position descriptions, and traditional recruiting practices toward a new matching technology that leapfrogs other online tools. The Exchange uses statistically-validated questions for specific positions and sophisticated matching to create high quality connections and increase the diversity of candidate pools. It surveys candidates and employers about needs, interests, abilities, and preferences and then uses WorkFountain’s patent-pending matching algorithms to create matches, instantly connecting job and internship-seekers to opportunities. By matching candidates to employers based not only on skills and requirements, but also on job interests and workplace preferences, the Exchange ensures that candidates are well-suited for positions and provides employers with access to candidates who are the best possible fit. It was developed by Michigan-based process engineering company Digerati (under the name WorkFountain) to help create a more efficient labor market and reduce bias in the hiring process. The Exchange also:
- Cuts the time and cost of recruiting and job searching
- Provides rapid and high quality matches
- Serves the unique needs of small, mid-sized, and large employers
- Delivers integrated resources to support recruitment goals and compliance reporting
- Provides customer-centered tools for employers, job-seekers, educators, industry organizations, economic developers and others
The first portal to launch in Minnesota belongs to the Vadnais Heights Economic Development Corporation, titled the VHEDC Talent Exchange. Within a few hours of launching the site, three employers had jumped at the opportunity to leverage the unique matching technology.
Second to launch was the AgriGrowth Job Exchange. AgriGrowth immediately saw the benefit of a talent matching platform that would help ag employers more effectively and efficiently find the talent they needed. The volume of job posts on their portal has been growing at the trade association’s network of employers experience the platform and see how powerful it can be.
Launching within 24 hours of each other, the MHTA Talent Exchange of the Minnesota High Tech Association and the Minnesota Chamber of Commerce’s MN Job Match platform have already created a lot of buzz. With more hosted portals preparing for launch in March, the RealTime Talent Exchange continues to grow. If you have questions about the Exchange or becoming a host, please contact RealTime Talent’s Executive Director, Sandee Joppa or the Exchange Director, Jess Niebuhr.
Foundational Research on Minnesota’s Regional Labor Markets is Released
RealTime Talent has been busy developing a series of regional strategies to help academic, workforce, government, and economic development professionals across Minnesota better use data to respond to local job markets and labor force needs. The executive summary of the 40-page report on Minnesota’s diverse landscape of job opportunities was released publicly today, November 30th, after being shared with colleagues and stakeholders closest to the data. Throughout the month of December, RealTime Talent will post segments of this larger report that highlight each region in its own blog post. At the end of the month, we will close with the full, 40-page report and a special statewide workforce gap graphic that we have been developing for several months with support from our partners. We can’t wait to share the insights we have uncovered in this rich online job posting data from TalentNeuron Recruit, and hope this work supports your own professional practice wherever you work in our wonderful state.
We encourage you to get excited for the release of these unique reports by reviewing the executive summary and tuning in December 2nd for the first regional installment on Southeast Minnesota!
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