3M laying off 1,100 at Maplewood headquarters

3M is laying off 1,100 employees who work at its Maplewood headquarters or whose jobs are tied to it, the company told the state this week.

That's nearly twice as many Minnesota job losses as the company previously anticipated would be part of its sweeping cost-cutting plan and at least 10% of 3M's local workforce.

"The additional number adds in remote employees who work for our headquarters but are not based in Minnesota," the company said Tuesday.

The layoff notice follows last week's announcement that 6,000 jobs will be cut globally as the company embarks on a reorganization. An additional 2,500 manufacturing jobs also are being cut, 3M said in January.

In total, the company is reducing its roughly 90,000-employee workforce worldwide by 10%.

The headquarters layoffs are set to begin June 30.

Few other details were included in 3M's letter to the state Department of Employment and Economic Development. The public notice is required for layoffs of a certain size.

The layoff is the largest announced in Minnesota this year. The pending closure of the HyLife pork plant in Windom, Minn., would cost the jobs of slightly more than 1,000 people.

Louis Johnston, an economics professor at the College of St. Benedict/St. John's University, said the 3M layoffs "are another signal that the Fed's interest rate hikes are starting to affect the economy more generally" and beyond the housing market slowdown.

"We're also seeing the end of fiscal stimulus from the pandemic, plus anticipation that spending cuts/slowdowns are likely as part of a deal on the debt ceiling," Johnston wrote in an email.

Corporate job cuts are happening across industries; several banks have announced layoffs in recent weeks. Details are few on Minnesota layoffs, but cuts at Wells Fargo, as well as hybrid work, are reasons the bank is selling its home mortgage campus south of downtown Minneapolis.

Tens of thousands of Meta and Amazon employees also are being laid off this year, including hundreds of Amazon warehouse workers in Minnesota. Best Buy and Medtronic have announced their own cuts but declined to disclose details on layoffs in the state.

National job opening data released Tuesday showed a tightening labor market, but there were still nearly two unfilled jobs for every unemployed American at the end of March, continuing a historic imbalance in the labor market.

It was the third straight month that job openings have declined, a notable development after 2022 when job openings seesawed from month to month.

"The labor market has been, through [the first quarter], a resilient anchor for the economy," said Aaron Terrazas, chief economist at the career site Glassdoor. "But we're getting more and more signals that those foundations are really starting to tremble."

The abundance of job openings does not mean the available positions are all equivalent in pay and benefits to the jobs being shed, said Aaron Sojourner, labor economist at the Upjohn Institute for Employment Research.

He also said the "labor leverage ratio" that divides the number of people quitting over the number of firings has been falling back toward pre-pandemic levels with roughly two people leaving voluntarily for every layoff.

"It has been falling since the Fed started raising interest rates last year, and this month, in the most recent data, it took a big fall," Sojourner said. "Quits fell, and discharges rose."

The report includes material from the New York Times.