Sources & References
Metro Job Market Pulse · Minneapolis-St. Paul-Bloomington, MN-WI MSA · October 2026
Every advertised-pay, job-posting and industry figure in this briefing comes from WageScape's own database of active job postings. The sources below back the external facts cited in the written analysis.
Sources cited in this report
This Month's Takeaways
DEED commissioner linked participation decline to immigration enforcement
Minnesota DEED Commissioner Matt Varilek — Public statement on labor force participation drivers
Local Economic Conditions
Metro unemployment rate was 4.7% in August 2026
Bureau of Labor Statistics — Metro-area unemployment rate, August 2026
Minnesota labor force participation fell to 66.9% from 68.1%
Minnesota DEED — State labor force participation rate trend, 2026
Metro average weekly wage of $1,747 vs national $1,654
Bureau of Labor Statistics — Quarterly Census of Employment and Wages, Q1 2026
Open Threads in the Data
Public sector added 9% jobs while finance and information contracted
Minnesota DEED — Sector-level employment change, year-over-year 2026
Looking Ahead
National September payrolls added only 29,000 jobs with downward revisions
Bureau of Labor Statistics — National nonfarm payroll report, September 2026
How the numbers are calculated
- Advertised pay is the median of the pay ranges employers publish in active job postings in this metro. It is not survey or payroll data.
- Percent changes compare the latest six full months with the six months before that, for the same metro and sector.
- Sectors group postings by the employer's industry (NAICS) classification into ten sectors. Where a metro has too few postings in a sector, the state figure is used instead.
- Role pay trends use the same comparison windows. "Stable" means a change of less than 3%; "moderate" 3–10%; "significant" more than 10%.
Official data for comparison