Minnesota job-seekers come up empty, though data shows healthy labor market

It’s been four months and at least 100 job applications since Brandon Vasquez was laid off.

He hasn’t gotten a single interview.

“It’s brutal,” said Vasquez, 44, who lost his marketing director job at a local college just before Christmas.

The Minnesota and U.S. labor markets have stayed healthy in the face of rising economic uncertainty, but job-seekers like Vasquez can see the writing on the wall as anxious companies start cutting positions or opting not to fill open jobs.

Vasquez’s former employer started making cuts last year, he said, because of concerns about possible funding losses under President Donald Trump’s administration.

Since then, the precariousness has only grown.

“There’s a lot of uncertainty with day-to-day changes from the administration, and it’s hard to tell what’s going to be coming next,” Vasquez said, “and I think a lot of it is being reflected in companies and organizations choosing to hire or not hire, or what their next steps might be.”

The Minneapolis resident was one of hundreds of job-seekers who flocked to downtown St. Paul on Tuesday to connect with prospective employers at the People of Color Career Fair. In interviews, multiple attendees said they’d recently experienced a layoff or were preparing for one.

But while unemployed people say they’re struggling to find work, employers say they’re struggling to fill jobs. The 40 who set up tables at Tuesday’s career fair ranged from Securian Financial and Andersen Windows to the state of Minnesota and city of St. Paul.

“We are hiring for everything,” Mayor Melvin Carter told attendees. “If you have a PhD, we want you. If you have a master’s degree, we want you. If you don’t have a degree at all, we want you to work for the city of St. Paul.”

Jobs have outnumbered job-seekers in Minnesota for months, and the state Department of Employment and Economic Development (DEED) reported Thursday that employers added 10,700 jobs in March, the biggest monthly gain in a year.

Unemployment ticked up to 3.1% because more people entered the labor force, DEED Commissioner Matt Varilek said at a virtual news conference. There are multiple possible explanations for the influx of job-seekers, from people re-entering the workforce after time away to business expansions and successful workforce development programs, according to Angelina Nguyễn, DEED’s labor market information director.

The state bases its data on employers reporting payroll jobs, so recent mass federal layoffs aren’t reflected.

Once a worker is off the payroll, Nguyễn said, that job loss shows up in the following month’s data. Overall, she said, job gains in Minnesota outnumbered losses in March, and the volume of layoffs was about the same as a year ago.

Nida Troyer, 31, was laid off a couple of months ago after nine years at a Fortune 500 company. It’s given her the chance to make a wanted pivot from product management to business development and strategy, but so far, her job search has been unsuccessful.

“I think it’s just not an ideal time to be in the job market,” said Troyer, of Apple Valley, “and I may have to take a pay cut to start again.”

Yumei Yang, 33, first came to the U.S. from China on a student visa and moved to Minnesota for a job in 2020. Now a green card holder married to an American citizen, Yang said she’d recently been laid off and had been looking for a new job in tech since January.

“I submitted so many applications” without any word back, she said.

Yang said she likes what her St. Paul home has to offer, including museums and libraries where she can take her 15-month-old son. But she’s also hearing from friends in New York who say there are jobs there.

“I don’t know,” Yang said. “Maybe I need to move to New York.”