Imagine. A powerful magic box. Inside this magic box is information – and this information has the ability to influence your knowledge of job market trends by presenting the most current and in demand jobs, skills, and certifications, in any area of the state of Minnesota. Remember, the box is magical – so feel free […]
As Career and Technical Education awareness month comes to an end, we acknowledge our many partners that play a vital role in CTE and thank you for all your hard work in this space. RealTime Talent has long collaborated with many of our CTE partners to provide labor market and career data aimed to inform students and job-seekers. In 2017, through Perkins federal funding, we created a series of reports offering insight into three career clusters through the lens of employer demand including Agriculture, Food, & Natural Resources, Business, Management, & Administration, and Finance. These reports, along with a series of career pathways reports, were distributed among CTE coordinators and educators throughout Minnesota. To view or download these reports, click HERE.
Last November, RealTime Talent developed career pathway handouts for the White Bear Lake area school district, highlighting four key areas including Healthcare, Manufacturing, Construction, and IT pathways in Ramsey County. “These youth-friendly handouts were created to inform students on the career building jobs they may qualify for now or in the near future,” said Erin Olson, RealTime Talent Research Strategist. “By using school colors and images like emojis, these reports are appealing to the reader and can spark great conversation about these careers.”
Jenny Moore, the Career Pathways Navigator for the White Bear Lake Area Schools said, “I love everything about these reports” as she distributed them at a career expo attended by over 300 students and more than 70 industry partners. “It is truly amazing what RealTime Talent has done for our local community.” After Jenny shared these reports with secondary educators in her district, Shannon Grant, a Health and Physical Education Teacher at White Bear Lake High School, used the reports for a unique classroom assignment. Her students used the data provided on the career pathway handouts to gain insights and do further research on a career they may be interested in. These students experienced a fun way to engage in career exploration and developed some creative handouts of their own as well.
As we continue to promote the use of tools that address labor force needs and support our education system, RealTime Talent has been working with multiple CTE consortia, providing training and data consultation with TalentNeuron – a real-time job post data tool. Recently, RealTime Talent trained 30 career counselors and educators from the Wayzata area high schools. We look forward to how these educators will incorporate real-time labor and career information into their own classes. If you are an educator who’s interested in our research services or real-time labor market tools, reach out to us today!
If you have any questions about the work of RealTime Talent with Career and Technical Education, please contact Phil Arellano.
Did 2018 fly by for you? It did for the RealTime Talent team. About this same time last year, we were welcoming our new Executive Director, Deb Broberg, to RealTime Talent and we had just finished moving into the Chamber Foundation location. We adopted the mantra, “new year, new location, same mission.” As the year moved on and we settled into our new home, we continued to focus on our mission: to help create more informed, market-oriented decisions throughout the Minnesota workforce and education ecosystem to ensure the state’s economy has the talent it needs to help Minnesotans prepare for well-paying careers. We also continued our aim to create a movement toward workforce alignment, support sector-based collaborations for quality employment opportunities, increase cross-sector collaboration, and ensure daily decision-making is guided by strong data in the workforce and education ecosystem. Phew! That’s not only a mouthful – that’s a big task at hand! It’s a great thing we have so many great partners dedicated to Minnesota’s workforce and economy.
In 2018, RealTime Talent developed 113 data driven reports. From occupation snapshots and industry overviews, to labor market analyses and custom-built surveys, we offered just-in-time insights to decision-makers and encouraged data-informed planning in our workforce and education systems. Many of these reports are available on our website at http://www.realtimetalent.org/research.
We also gave 85 presentations and trained 310 participants on real-time labor market data tools both in the education and workforce space. 95 organizations and institutions of higher education that work with students, job-seekers, or employers currently had access to TalentNeuron Recruit and training and about 335-400 people currently use TalentNeuron Recruit on a regular basis in service to students, job-seekers, or employers. Between 6,400 and 7,350 job-seekers statewide received job search assistance that included data from TalentNeuron Recruit in FY2018, doubling the reach of the tool in 2017.
An estimated 7,200 students were advised using data from TalentNeuron Recruit in FY2018, with many more being reached with modified curriculum, programs, and materials that introduced them to high-demand career pathways. Approximately 60% of users working directly with students said use of TalentNeuron Recruit “increased the relevance of job opportunities to student needs” between April and October 2018.
RealTime Talent continued to use its unique position as a public-private partner to bring creative solutions to Minnesota’s labor shortage, skill misalignment, and labor market inefficiencies.
In K-12 education, we expanded TalentNeuron access and training, developed customized career pathway reports, and provided data consultation to Career and Technical Education (CTE) consortia across Minnesota, leading to in-depth engagement and increased use of labor market data in the classroom. For Higher Education, RealTime Talent created customized reports or provided consultation around program development, expansion, modification, as well as regional workforce data for institutions including, but not limited to, The College of St. Scholastica, St. Cloud State University, Normandale Community College, and AgCentric Center of Excellence. Some of RealTime Talent’s contributions to the workforce system include engagement with the Greater Metropolitan Workforce Council’s workforce planning efforts, supporting the sector committee, data work team, and the strategic partnership team in employer engagement and securing appropriate labor market data. RealTime Talent also supported the curriculum and delivery of the GMWC Sector Skills Academy, focusing on data-informed decision-making and employer engagement strategy. We were privileged to collaborate with the DEED Workforce Strategy Consultants and the Center for Economic Inclusion to support the GMWC and local Workforce Development Board employer engagement needs in the six key industry sectors.
This past year, RTT established a Business Talent Initiative, with the support of GreaterMSP, MSPWin, the Minnesota Chamber, MN Business Partnership, and the Itasca Project, to facilitate employer involvement in partnership with key sector team leads: MPMA, Hennepin County, AgriGrowth, and MHTA. This Business Talent Initiative is now a working group within RealTime Talent’s Advisory Council. We continued the development of diversity reports and talent sourcing strategy consulting for private companies and business associations, provided labor market data for industry membership organizations, and solidified relationships with the commercial building trades associations, offering demographic and workforce data for four quarters to help guide apprenticeship program enrollment planning.
We look forward to the work ahead of us in 2019 and collaborating with our partners in the great state of Minnesota.
If you have any questions about the work of RealTime Talent, please contact Phil Arellano, phil@realtimetalent.org.
Content contributed by Phil Arellano and Erin Olson, RealTime Talent.
RealTime Talent has been featured in the StarTribune twice so far this month, along with several organizational partners that make use of our data tools. In the Viewpoints interview with Neal St. Anthony that ran on May 6th, Project for Pride in Living and Jason Bruns, director of the Minnesota Center for Engineering and Manufacturing Excellence at Minnesota State University Mankato, were highlighted for how they use TalentNeuron Recruit with students and job-seekers. Among those partners featured in the second article were the Minnesota Chamber of Commerce, the Itasca Project, and Aaron Corcoran who has supported the work of the many workforce centers and Minnesota State partners in the Twin Cities.
May 6th: RealTime Talent Believes Information Sharing can Help it Improve Minnesota’s Workforce
May 16th: Employers Getting Creative in the Hunt for Good Workers in Good Economy
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.
The 13-county Central Minnesota planning region had a population of 693,108 in 2014, almost 13% of the state’s population. With a larger population, yet a similar volume of jobs posted compared to other Greater Minnesota regions, the number of people in the labor force per job opening (potential candidates indicated below) is very high. This is the result of the region’s highly mobile labor force, with over 40% of the region’s working residents commuting outside of the region to get to their place of work according to one DEED analysis of the commute shed. Central Minnesota is a net exporter of labor with only 198,956 workers both residing and working in the region in 2013 according to the U.S. Census Bureau.
According to DEED’s Occupational Employment Statistics, about 16% of all jobs held in Central Minnesota are in production manufacturing, whereas production comprises only 11% of all jobs statewide. Healthcare and social assistance jobs are expected to increase in demand by over 28% through 2022, while production manufacturing is expected to increase by only 3%. In 2014, DEED identified ten industry sub-sectors that define the region by having significantly higher concentrations of jobs and firms than seen statewide. Overall, Central Minnesota has 9.7% of the state’s total employment, but is home to 25% of the state’s employment in animal production, furniture, and related product manufacturing. The projected slowed growth of manufacturing and production in the region is of particular concern for the local communities that rely on these economic niches, which are extremely diverse across the eastern and western subregions of Central Minnesota.
Transportation services are in high demand in Central Minnesota, accounting for 17% of all jobs advertised online to date in 2016. Healthcare positions are the second most sought, with 14% of all postings pertaining to this sector. When health support occupations are included (3.2% pf the postings), the total healthcare function positions lead as the most-sought positions in the region. These types of jobs are typically advertised online whenever openings are available, and counts are a relatively strong representation of regional labor needs. However, a number of critical industries continue to post job openings in very low volumes and may under count actual need. Some of these industries include forestry and logging, paper manufacturing, electric power generation and transmission, and mining. Highly unionized industries and temporary or seasonal positions are also not advertised online in large volumes, and other data sources might capture the true number of vacancies better.
For the full report and a list of additional relevant data sources, see our Reports page.
Home to 326,649 people in 2014, just 6% of the state’s population resides in Northeastern Minnesota–the beautiful Arrowhead Region. St. Louis County is the region’s largest county by size and population with approximately 61.5% of the region’s population. Jobs are highly concentrated around the region’s largest city, Duluth, which is located in St. Louis County. South and western counties of the region are growing at the fastest rates (Carlton and Itasca), while northeastern counties have seen steadily declining populations since 2000 (Koochiching and Lake).
Healthcare jobs account for 29% of the 41,516 jobs advertised online in the region this year to date. The second most common types of job advertised in Northeast Minnesota were transportation-related, specifically for heavy tractor trailers and heavy truck driving. Manufacturing, construction, engineering, and marketing each saw notable decreases in job posting volume between 2015 and 2016. Some unique industry niches of the region, though not significantly represented in online job postings, include forestry and logging, paper manufacturing, electric power generation and transmission, and mining.
For more information on the Northeast’s unique labor market, view the report here.
The 7-County Twin Cities Metro Area is the most densely populated region of Minnesota. With 2,985,405 residents, it composes over half of the state’s population (54.7%). Similarly, 54.6% of the state’s currently advertised jobs are found in the Metro region. It contains five of Minnesota’s most populated counties and two (Scott and Carver counties) of the fastest growing. The population is generally younger than the rest of the state, with only 11.8% of its population being over the age of 65, according to the U.S. Census Bureau (2014 estimates).
The Twin Cities has become a hub for Information Technology, accounting for 15% of all jobs advertised in the region to date in 2016 (90,888 jobs out of 601,920 total). Information technology positions span a number of industries and verticals, with healthcare IT rising as a clear need in the region.
The table below highlights the top hiring employer, most in-demand occupation, median advertised salary, and number of people per job in the Metro’s ten largest communities.
For the full report on the 7-county Twin Cities Metro, visit our Reports page.
Today we released the report on Southwestern Minnesota’s online job market.
Southwestern Minnesota’s economy is dominated by production manufacturing–particularly in agricultural production–and healthcare. About 25 percent of jobs in these industries were held by workers 55 and older in 2015. Home to 7 percent of the state’s population, the Southwest is sparsely populated. Mankato (pop. 41,040) is the largest city in the region, ranking as the 22nd largest in the state in 2014 (US Census Bureau Population Estimates).
The top five job titles advertised online in the Southwest since 2012 are 1. Registered Nurse, 2. Class A CDL Truck Driver, 3. Physical Therapist, 4. Owner Operator, and 5. Licensed Practical Nurse. Of the 6 major regions, the Southwest had the second highest median advertised salary in 2016 at $56,100/year. No major local or regional job boards could be identified in our research, and overall job posting volume is low in the region, but proportionate to its population similar to the Southeast and Northeast. In contrast, the Northwest and Central regions have many more people competing for fewer jobs, and the Twin Cities Metro has fewer people per job opening.
Recruitment for truck drivers is booming in the Southwest, with 30 percent of jobs advertised in the first three quarters of 2016 being transportation and shipping positions–tripling in number since 2015. Healthcare practitioners are also in high demand, making up 12.5 percent of the total 51,464 jobs advertised in the region between January and the end of September this year. The number of job postings seeking sales, business development, and information technology professionals declined since 2015. In demand certifications include a commercial driver’s license, HAZMAT, nursing certifications, and CPR.
Download the full report here: rtt-2016-regional-labor-market-southwest
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!
rtt-2016-regional-labor-markets-executive-summary-final