Number of job postings up slightly in Minnesota

Online job postings grew by 500 last month in Minnesota, according to a research organization that tracks job postings nationwide.

The Conference Board said online advertised job vacancies rose nationwide by about 47,400.

Demand for workers in November continued to be positive but has been "moving at a disappointingly slow pace in the last few months," June Shelp, vice president of the Conference Board, said in a written statement.

Shelp said the organization was surprised at the slow growth after October showed an increase in of 113,700 job postings. The increase in Minnesota was 3,600 online job postings in October.

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Minnesota and Wisconsin were among the few states in the Midwest that added job listings in November. Wisconsin had 2,500 more job vacancies in November.

Michigan had the country's largest decline, with 5,000 fewer job postings.

EVEN IF EXTENSION STALLS, NO EFFECTS IN MINN. UNTIL MARCH

Some two million Americans nationwide will see lose unemployment benefits this month unless Congress acts to extend them, but even if Congress remains gridlocked on the issue, unemployed Minnesotans won't start to see any effects until March. That's because Minnesota is one of about a dozen states that has its own supplemental unemployment program that kicks in once federal benefits run out.

The state Department of Employment and Economic Development declined to estimate how many Minnesotans might exhaust those supplemental benefits in March, but there are currently about 64,000 Minnesotans enrolled in the federal extended unemployment benefit program that expired today.

In total, about 150,000 people currently collect unemployment benefits in Minnesota. Every week, about 1,000 of them exhaust their benefits.

(MPR reporter Annie Baxter contributed to this report.)