6.0. EDSR 03-14-2005 - Laserfiche WebLink

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INFORMATION ATION Drawing Conclusions and Asking Questions . (Continued from page 2) chart 4 for the Twin Cities,however,there are differences EMPLOYMENT from out-state Minnesota. Professional and Business Ser- vices is much more prominent in the Twin Cities economic Next,focus on employment in chart 3. The employment mix. The industry is second in terms of establishments and bar shows total employment in the region and each indus- employment. However,most notably,it is the largest con- try's contribution to total employment. The biggest em- tributor to total wages. One can conclude then that in the ployer in out-state Minnesota(in terms of an industry)is Twin Cities,Professional and Business Services related corn- Trade,Transportation and Utilities(TTU). Education paries are relatively large employers and pay relatively and Health Services and Manufacturing round out the top higher wages. three industries in terms of employment. CONCLUSIONS Now,how do these three bars work together? This is where a real wealth of data can be derived. It is known Due to size constraints of this newsletter,it is impossible to that TTU has a lot of establishments. But,if one looks at explore all the wealth of information that can be found in es- the share that TTU contributes to employment and then to tablishment,employment and wage data. However,a few wages,the overall percentage is declining. This indicates. conclusions about industry in both the Twin Cities and out- that while there are a lot of establishments,TTU compa- state Minnesota were drawn. These conclusions then bring Hies are relatively small employers(few employees per up a variety of policy questions. The Center will not attempt company)and pay mid-level wages(since it isn't a much to answer these questions,just merely bring them up in the matter of discourse. larger chunk of wages). Most importantly,the discussion of industry mixes brings up Manufacturing,on the other hand,has very few establish- mems. However,the share of employment related to the question of economic dependence. Does the dependence manufacturing is significantly larger. This implies they of out-state Minnesota on a few large manufacturing employ- have many employees per establishment. The share of ers leave rural Minnesota vulnerable to downturns in the the wage bar is even larger,suggesting that those few manufacturing industry in general? What about the possibil- establishments are paying far higher wages than other ity of outsourcing to foreign countries? How do rural areas IP industries. stay competitive? Does pursuing a cluster strategy focused on another industry make sense? Do cluster strategies leave The Professional and Business Services industry,while area economies vulnerable? having quite a few establishments,is not a major em- There are no hard answers to these questions,but they do ployer in out-state Minnesota as shown by the relatively merit consideration. For more on the data,see below. low percentage of total employment. Further,the indus- try does not pay particularly high wages. Similar conclusions can be worked out by examining • About the Data Covered Employment and Wages(CEW)data is collected by the Minnesota Depart- ment of Employment and Economic Development(DEED)in conjunction with the Bureau of Labor Statistics. CEW data is comprised of information on the number of establishments,number of employees and average wages by industry and by county. Employers and employees included in the data are those covered under the Unemployment Insurance System. This does mean that a few select populations are traditionally left out of this count—farmers and railroad workers among them. It is estimated that only 3%of Minnesota employment is not counted under the CEW program. CEW data is tallied for both private ownership and all ownership in most cases. However,there are times when only the totals for private ownership are available,therefore,this newsletter used CEW data on privately owned businesses. • VOLUME 4,ISSUE i Page3