Minnesota lost 5,200 jobs in December, ending a streak of job growth that lasted more than a year.
Meanwhile, the state unemployment rate ticked up from 2.3% to 2.5%, according to data released Thursday by the Minnesota Department of Employment and Economic Development (DEED).
The jobless rate has been steadily rising over the last several months since hitting a record low for any state of 1.8% over the summer. But it remains at a historically low level and is still one of the lowest in the nation. The U.S. unemployment rate is 3.5%.
A big factor in last month's job decline was government, which lost 6,100 jobs, all of it coming from local government. State officials were scratching their heads trying to better understand reasons for it — if perhaps end-of-year grants had shifted or if there was an issue with the seasonal adjustment of the data.
DEED Commissioner Steve Grove said he was surprised by the decline. He thought local government would have added jobs in December with all the snow the state got that month, likely leading to a flurry of hiring of snow plow drivers.
At the same time, Minnesota's private sector added 900 jobs last month.
"It was kind of a weird month with that job dip overall, but the private sector did grow," he said. "We haven't seen massive reports of layoffs. There were a few kind of near the end of November and early December that were on our radar. but there weren't a slew of them over the last month and a half."
Grove added, "Obviously as we begin the new year, like every state, we are monitoring economic conditions very closely."