Economic dashboard shows state of the Twin Cities economy in 2025

NINA MOINI: This morning, hundreds of business and civic leaders gathered at Compete 25 to talk about the state of the Minneapolis and St. Paul economy. Unveiled at the event was something called the MSP Regional Indicators Dashboard, which looks at economic, social, and environmental benchmarks and compares it to other Metropolitan Cities to see how the Twin Cities stacks up. Some of those other cities include Chicago, Boston, and Seattle. Joining me now to share where the Minneapolis St. Paul economy stands is Peter Frosh, President and CEO of Greater MSP. Thanks for your time this afternoon, Peter.

PETER FROSCH: Good to talk with you.

NINA MOINI: For folks who don't know, would you tell us a little bit about just the work at Greater MSP and what you all do?

PETER FROSCH: Sure. Greater MSP is a public-private partnership of big companies and universities, foundations, and cities and counties, who all team up to create more economic opportunity in this region and across the state.

NINA MOINI: So when you're gathering all of this information and all of these different facets of life, how are you going about gathering that information? Who's gathering it?

PETER FROSCH: Yeah, it's a great question. So 10 years ago, this work began. And it starts with an answer to a fundamental question of how is our region's economy performing because that matters to all of us, regardless of what sector you're in. And there was a need and opportunity to create a shared base of facts because everybody's got a perspective. But ideally, we have one shared set of facts. So about 500 leaders in this region worked together to create this MSP Regional Indicators Dashboard, which tracks 50 metrics across a number of categories and, as you mentioned, benchmarks against peers. And we've been doing this in tracking it year after year for a decade. And this morning we had 400 leaders and friends together at St. Thomas to report out on what we found.

NINA MOINI: And just for folks who may not even what a dashboard really is, can you explain? Is this for that people can access it, right?

PETER FROSCH: Absolutely. So this is a free, public, transparent resource that doesn't tell us what we should do but how we're doing. And it's available at GreaterMSP.org. And we've handed over 10,000 copies, physical copies of the dashboard out over the past number of years because leaders like to carry it around, share it with each other. And it's become a regional practice. And that's actually what's really important about this. The data is important. But what's most important is that leaders come together across those boundaries that separate them every day and confront this shared set of facts and make some meaning out of it, which is what was going on today.

NINA MOINI: Why do you think it's important to compare the Minneapolis-St. Paul area to other cities across the country because populations are different? There are just so many different circumstances in all of these different cities as I was thinking about them. What does it say, and how accurate does it feel?

PETER FROSCH: Well, that's a great question. And that's the idea of competitiveness, which we were talking about in the room this morning. And so the dashboard for 10 years has tracked how has our region performed against itself year on year over some of these metrics that matter, like job growth or overall economic growth?

But it's also important, how are we tracking against, as you mentioned, Seattle and Chicago and Denver and Charlotte and other places around the country because what the data-- that's how we know how we stack up. That's how we know where we're strong and where we need to improve because, in reality, when we think about the economy, we think about opportunity, we're competing for talent. We're competing for capital. We're competing for investment that our economy relies upon to grow. That's not disconnected from the conversation I was just listening to, that you're having with the new council member in St. Paul.

NINA MOINI: Right, wanting to be competitive, draw growth, draw big companies to come and build here and create jobs, I'm sure. But let's dive in. I know there are a lot of different, again, facets of life that you all were looking at. Would you tell me about just a few of the areas where you felt the region is doing particularly well economically?

PETER FROSCH: Yeah, there were a couple of headlines that we distilled for the group out of all of this data. And one of them is that today our region is a great place for workers. And we have a number of different indicators that point to that conclusion. Unemployment here is among the lowest in the country and has been consistently. Labor force participation, the number of people participating in the workforce, is very high, among the highest in the country.

We have high-quality jobs, which is really important. It's not just about having jobs but having jobs that pay a family-sustaining wage. And we rank really highly in the country for having good jobs. We also see that we are number one in our peer set for the number of women and number of immigrants working in our economy, which is a really important measure of inclusion. So that's all good news.

NINA MOINI: Yeah, what about some areas that there is room for improvement?

PETER FROSCH: So one of those areas that we looked at is-- and there is good news here too-- is around racial economic inclusion. And so going back 10 years when we started this work, the conversation in the region was we really need to start paying more attention to including everyone in our economy. And the data was really clear that we were among the worst performing in the country at that. A lot of people did a lot of things over the past decade.

And what the data is showing is that is having a positive impact. And so while inequalities remain, our region is making material sustained progress in closing gaps in poverty rate, wage gap, employment gap, home ownership gaps, things that really matter to economic outcomes and opportunity by race, which is really good news. And the message this morning was this means that when we lean into it we can make a difference. So it's time to double down.

NINA MOINI: How would you propose leaning into something like that? What does that look like?

PETER FROSCH: Well, I think there are a couple of really big efforts that are going to become better known in this region and state over the coming months. One of them is called the GroundBreak Coalition, which is an effort to dramatically improve access to capital for community investment for the purpose of creating a lot more BIPOC homeowners, business owners, creating new affordable apartment units, again, very connected to the conversation you were just having about St. Paul. We're working to mobilize $5 billion, so a level we have never seen in this metro or state before, and at a level of ambition that no one in the country is even aiming for. So that is just getting started. And that's a good example of what doubling down would look like.

NINA MOINI: And when you mentioned these big numbers, I don't know if any of that funding is supposed to come from the federal government. Recently, we've seen a lot of economic policy changes, instability, uncertainty, tariffs. Are you concerned about the impact of some of the federal policies that are going on or even access to the data that you all are using in the future?

PETER FROSCH: Yes, yes, and yes. So the access to data really matters. Much of the data that we're using in this dashboard and have for over a decade is federal data. So that is incredibly important. And this is a really material example of how having access to that federal data helps us here plan and adjust for our future. The federal funding, the federal policy certainly is having all kinds of impacts across Minnesota and across every state in the country. Part of the message this morning was reminding everyone that we're living and working here, but we're part of one national and global economy.

So what's happening in Washington really matters. What's happening geopolitically really matters to us. And that brought us to one of the big ideas that was shared this morning, which is the data shows that we need to be growing and innovating faster and better in this economy, and that over the past 10 years we've been losing altitude on our rate of growth. And we're losing ground against peers across the country. So taking on accelerating economic growth so we can create more good jobs, especially in the age of AI, and create more opportunity for everyone in our community needs to be a new civic challenge that we're all embracing, not just business.

NINA MOINI: Peter Frosch, thank you for stopping by Minnesota Now and sharing this with us. I appreciate your time.

PETER FROSCH: Thanks for your interest.

NINA MOINI: Peter Frosch is the president and CEO of Greater MSP.