Letter from the Editor

June 2010

Tracking the Recovery

While reviewing back issues of Trends recently, I saw a lot of stories about the recession and its effects on Minnesota. Not that it was a surprise, given that the recession remains the story about the economy. Among other things in the past year, we’ve written about how the downturn has affected immigration and migration in the state, health care benefits, men vs. women and military veterans.

We’ll continue to look at recession-related topics in coming issues, but we’re also beginning to think about what will happen in the post-recession. Just as no two recessions are alike, no two recoveries are the same either.

In a story in this issue entitled “After the Recession,” Rachel Vilsack and Adrian Shaheed look at what will be different for job seekers and employers in this recovery. For starters, workers will face more competition than usual for jobs. But another big difference will be how people look for work. Back in the last recession in 2001, no one had ever heard of Facebook or Twitter, let alone knew how to network or find jobs using those tools.

Elsewhere in this issue, Kyle Uphoff looks at how the recession has affected rural and urban areas in Minnesota. Although metro areas seem to have fared slightly worse than more rural parts of the state during the downturn, both regions face employment challenges. Thu-Mai Ho-Kim writes about the Minnesota manufactured export market, which saw sales decline in 2009 because of the global recession. But an accompanying story on Digi- Key profiles a Thief River Falls company that is thriving and expects to generate one-third of its sales outside North America this year.

Finally, Amanda Rohrer reviews a new data series in the Current Employment Statistics program that should give us a better picture of what is happening in the economy, particularly related to average hours and earnings. In an era of economic uncertainty, the data series is one more piece of information that can help shed light on where we’ve been and where we’re headed.

Monte Hanson
Editor