Duluth's workforce recovery gathers steam

DULUTH — After months of little movement, the Duluth area's workforce is growing.

The Duluth metro area's labor pool grew by 2.5% from January 2021 to January 2022, the largest annual increase during the COVID-19 pandemic.

But data released last week by the Minnesota Department of Employment and Economic Development (DEED) shows the workforce is still 1.2% below its January 2020 number, equaling about 1,700 workers.

For months, the region that includes St. Louis, Carlton and Douglas (Wis.) counties has dealt with low unemployment rates but fewer available workers as they retired, stayed home to care for children as the pandemic dragged on or chose not to work for other reasons.

A growing labor force is "heartening," said Carson Gorecki, a regional labor analyst for DEED, but a couple of more months of data are needed before declaring a positive trend.

Prior to January's data, employment recovery nationwide and in Minnesota seemed to be slowing, Gorecki said, "so this report kind of surprised us."

He said the number of workers still needed to climb back to pre-pandemic levels isn't many, "but demand for labor is stronger than ever," and even the addition of 2,000 workers wouldn't make much of a difference. The region's tight labor market existed before the arrival of COVID-19 and was only exacerbated by it.

The Duluth metro added 500 jobs from December to January, but it's down 5,800 jobs from January 2020.

The upward labor swing shows people are feeling more confident that the pandemic isn't going to upend their worlds again, said Elena Foshay, director of workforce development for the city of Duluth.

Despite the pandemic, the availability of jobs and in-school instruction this year "has injected some momentum into the labor market," she said.

Duluth, recently awarded more than $1 million in state grants for career training, has partnered with several community organizations and Lake Superior College to offer classes beginning in April for in-demand occupations in several industries, including transportation and health care. Foshay's department is working with employers to help them navigate the shifting labor market. Worker expectations have changed, she said, for benefits, wages, inclusivity and work-life balance.

"The pandemic caused a lot of people to fundamentally re-evaluate what's important to them," she said.

In Cook County, where seasonal workers play a crucial role, a larger labor force deficit remains.

Among the workers lost in the past two years is the group of international employees who come to the county through the J-1 foreign student work visa program. In 2019, 227 people worked in Cook County through that program, and that number shrank to 18 in 2020. It rose to 91 in 2021.

"The Trump administration really decimated the visa programs we rely on greatly," said Jim Boyd, the policy and advocacy director for the Cook County Chamber of Commerce.

While summer 2020 brought a "roaring" tourism season to Grand Marais, it struggled to hire workers to meet the demand, he said, and the trend continued in 2021.

The resurgence of that program is "critical" to the area's hospitality industry, Boyd said.