Every year, the University of Minnesota-Duluth’s Career and Internship Services conducts a follow-up survey with new UMD graduates to determine graduates’ employment status, job title, salary, and location six to twelve months after graduation. We at the BBER decided to compare the results of the most recent survey with data on the occupations in highest demand in the northeast part of the state, to identify which UMD programs are best equipped to fill in-demand careers locally and where there is room for improvement.
Occupational demand was calculated using the Minnesota Department of Employment and Economic Development (DEED) Occupations in Demand tool. The tool rates every occupation based on current and projected demand statewide and regionally, including the northeast region of Aitkin, Carlton, Cook, Itasca, Koochiching, Lake, and St. Louis counties. Rankings are based on the number of job vacancies, employment levels, and unemployment insurance claims. The tool also awards each job title with a star rating from “five stars” (more favorable current demand conditions) to “one star” (less favorable current demand conditions).
To begin, we selected the 11 occupations with the highest local demand, based on current demand rank (updated January 2022). Specifically, we included occupations that required a bachelor’s degree or higher, had received a “five-star” demand rating from DEED, and had one or more related UMD programs from which to attract eligible workers. These occupations are shown in Table 1.
The first column in the table shows DEED’s rank for the occupation in the northeast region. A rank of “1” would be the job title with most favorable demand conditions. It should be noted that many of the jobs with the highest local demand do not require a bachelor’s degree, which is why the occupation shown in the top slot in the table ranks at number 24. This indicates that there are 23 occupations in our region with higher demand that require lower levels of education. Some of these include nursing assistants, food preparation workers, cashiers, and many others.
The table also includes each occupation’s projected openings over the coming decade and 25th percentile wage—which we call starting wage—in Northeastern Minnesota and the seven-country metro area. The 25th percentile wage represents the wage at which 75% of workers in that specific occupation earn more and 25% of workers earn less in the selected region. Salary data was from the Minnesota Salary Survey, 1st quarter 2021.
The last five columns of the table show data from UMD’s Career and Internship survey. For each occupation, the BBER shows the occupation’s corresponding UMD major(s), the number of graduates completing the major(s), the percentage of graduates who were employed in the seven-county metro, the percentage of graduates who were employed in the Duluth/Hermantown area, and the average annual reported starting wage. For job titles with multiple UMD majors, a weighted average with each major was used to calculate the reported wage.
By comparing the occupations with the greatest local demand and UMD’s related programs we can better understand areas where the university is meeting local demand for workers in certain occupations, where local demand for workers exceeds the number of program completions.
There are several notable trends that emerge upon examining the table. First, for most of the UMD programs shown in the table, the percentage of graduates who report employment in the Duluth-Hermantown region one year after graduation ranges between 10-30%, with the exception of the newly created Professional Sales major, where none of the 8 graduates who completed the program in 2020 remained in the region. Meanwhile, the percentage of UMD graduates who find employment in the Twin Cities metro tends to be much higher. On average, between 30-70% of graduates reported being employed in the Twin Cities. These findings could be attributed to lower starting wages in the northeast. For nearly all of the occupations in the table, the starting wage in northeast Minnesota is lower than the starting wage in the Twin Cities metro.
However, while the starting wage for most occupations tends to be lower in the northeast region than in the Twin Cities metro area, there are a number of occupations where wages are very competitive in the northeast region compared with the Twin Cities. These include market research analysts and marketing specialists and teachers of all levels. Interestingly, less than 20% of surveyed graduates from UMD’s corresponding programs (marketing, marketing analytics, elementary education, and secondary education) reported working in the Duluth-Hermantown area. There could be an opportunity for local businesses and workforce development professionals in the region to recruit graduates in these fields.
Of the UMD graduates surveyed, those least likely to remain in the region after graduation were from the professional sales (0% reported working in the Duluth area), finance (10%), and health care management programs (10%). For the sales manager and financial manager occupations, the reason for this difficulty retaining local graduates is likely the large wage gap between the northeast region and the Twin Cities metro. As shown in the table, the starting wage for sales managers in the northeast region is nearly 30% lower than for sales managers in the Twin Cities, and the wage gap for financial managers was even larger. Looking ahead, DEED projects that the northeast region will see roughly 320 sales manager job openings over the coming decade and 494 openings for financial managers, so local businesses may need to increase wages to remain competitive and recruit workers in the future. Wages in the northeast region are slightly more competitive for medical and health services managers, compared with those in the Twin Cities, and local demand is even stronger. With the region’s strong health care industry, local providers may want to strengthen their partnership with the UMD’s Health Care Management program to increase the number of graduates who obtain employment in the region.
The UMD graduates most likely to remain in the region after graduation were from the social work/psychology (30% reported working in the Duluth area) and accounting programs (23%). This would suggest that local businesses in these industries have been more successful at recruiting and retaining UMD graduates. One reason for the higher share of UMD graduates working in those fields locally could be that the Northeastern Minnesota starting wage is fairly competitive to wages in the Twin Cities metro. Looking ahead, it is anticipated that the northeast region will have 823 openings for substance abuse, behavioral disorder, and mental health counselors and 930 openings for accountants and auditors in the next ten years. If local businesses continue to successfully retain students from these programs, UMD graduates could fill some of the demand for those occupations.
For many in the northeast part of the state, recruiting and retaining graduates from local colleges and universities is a top priority. We hope that these data can help workforce and economic development professionals understand which local industries and firms have had the best success at retaining local graduates, which programs provide the best opportunities to fill gaps in demand, and where we might build stronger connections between local businesses and academic programs.