Opinion editor's note: Editorials represent the opinions of the Star Tribune Editorial Board, which operates independently from the newsroom.
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From the viewpoint of an unemployed or underemployed worker, Minnesota's economy is the best kind to have: There are more than two vacant positions for every worker who lacks a job.
From the perspective of an employer, the job market is so tight that it's tough to keep enough staff on the payroll. That cuts into productivity and profits.
And from the vantage of a state official — say, Commissioner Steve Grove of the Department of Employment and Economic Development — the situation requires an effort to "connect dots." That's the object of DEED's current "Summer of Jobs" campaign. It's a chance to introduce potential workers to opportunities they may not have considered, and to help employers locate reservoirs of talent they may have overlooked.
Speaking with an editorial writer by phone Tuesday from Duluth, where he had just shadowed a surgical assistant and was about to join a roundtable on bringing retired workers back into the workforce, Grove described the challenge Minnesota must meet.
"We face the largest number of job vacancies in Minnesota in the history of our state," he said, with "214,000 job openings. We have the fifth-tightest labor market of any state in the country.
"So you've got a unique and somewhat weird situation in our economy, where you've got the lowest unemployment rate ever, but not enough workers to fill the jobs that are open. And the truth of the matter is there are a lot of opportunities in the market right now, and frankly a lot of inefficiencies in the market. There are a lot of pools of labor that employers don't think to look at, and there are lots of jobs that job seekers aren't aware of."