Northwest region's construction job growth the best in Minnesota
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Construction is outpacing other job sectors in Minnesota in terms of annual growth, according to the latest employment report from the Minnesota Department of Employment and Economic Development, or DEED.
The sector grew by nearly 12,000 jobs in the year ending in November, growing 8.3 percent.
Growth in the northwest part of the state has been especially strong, as detailed in an earlier report written by Anthony Schaffhauser, DEED’s analyst for the northwest region, which encompasses about 26 counties. He found that between 2019-2024, construction job growth there increased by 17.6 percent compared to only about 8.1 percent growth in the sector statewide.
“Construction in northwest Minnesota is the growth leader,” Schaffhauser said. “It's outpacing all the other sectors, all the other industry sectors, and also outpacing construction in all the other Minnesota regions."
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Schaffhauser said, by comparison, health care was the only other sector in the region besides construction to add more than 1,000 jobs. But with health care being the bigger industry, he says construction job growth is nothing short of impressive.
"It's punching a lot higher than its weight, so to speak, in terms of its size in (the) northwest," he said.
Commercial construction drives growth
Schaffhauser added both residential and commercial construction both saw growth, but it was work in commercial construction that really grew, driven in part by infrastructure projects.
"(That’s) including utility systems, including highway bridge construction and including the heavy and civil engineering construction in the region,” he said. “And then also the contractors that supply all of this."
Unless something changes, Schaffhauser said construction job growth in the northwest is a long-term trend that he expects will continue.
Steady work
That growth forecast is good news for Adam Schlepp. He’s a specialty trade contractor in Fergus Falls focused on drywall installation and finishing. His business, Adam Schlepp Drywall LLC, does both residential and commercial jobs. And he said business has been good in both areas.
"The increase on the residential side has been coming from brand new home builds, a lot of those being on lake properties,” he said. “And commercial work (is) pretty steady. It seems like communities are growing and new buildings are going up everywhere, and they need drywall as soon as they build something new."
Schlepp said his busiest period begins in the spring and runs to the beginning of fall. That's also when he does most of his non-residential work. He said his company completes about 70-100 projects yearly.
"When it comes to commercial work, we've done everything from break rooms, additions to commercial buildings, new commercial buildings and even small, 10-hour patch jobs,” he said. “It's just all kind of situational, and we see everything from banks to funeral homes to public buildings."
Although Schlepp said he’s seeing an uptick in the cost of materials, that hasn’t seemed to have affected work requests. And he even hired more workers to keep up with demand.
“Last summer was the most employees I've ever had," Schlepp said.
Schlepp said business has slowed down as it typically does for construction work this time of year. However, based on the projects he already has lined up, once winter ends he anticipates his workload to stay pretty steady.
Economic bellwether
“(Construction) often serves as the bellwether of the economy,” said Erick Garcia Luna, the regional outreach director at the Federal Reserve Bank of Minneapolis, during a recent presentation.
Garcia Luna said if households and developers alike feel confident, they’re going to invest.
“And that investment is going to trickle through the sector and throughout the economy,” he said. “The opposite is going to happen if investment is held back.”
DEED's employment outlook for construction in the northwest through 2032 projects an increase of about 1,000 jobs.
DEED continues releasing jobs numbers put on hold because of the federal government shutdown. And although data was not collected in October, the results show the state added about 8,900 jobs from September to November. But that wasn’t the case for the majority of the U.S. as they report job growth was “essentially flat” everywhere else.
