It’s no secret to commercial developers: The Minneapolis/St. Paul market is a strong one. And now Auction.com, in its July unemployment report, says that Minneapolis is the strongest Midwest market when it comes to job growth.
This is news that should provide even more encouragement to developers interested in building offices, multi-family apartments and retail centers in the Twin Cities.
According to the Auction.com report, saw job growth of 2.2 percent during the last three months. In July, the Twin Cities metropolitan area added 13,700 jobs. Minneapolis employment is also up 3.7 percent from a year ago.
The news wasn’t good for all Midwest markets, though. Auction.com referred to Cleveland’s economy as a disaster. According to the report, Cleveland’s economy shed jobs in four of the past five months. It is the only major metropolitan area still reporting employment dips from a year, with employment in the area falling 0.4 percent from this time last year.
Julie Zisfein, senior associate and economist with Auction.com Research, says that the recently released Bureau of Labor Statistics July metro area data shows continued job growth across the nation. Zisfein pointed out that 42 of 52 metropolitan areas saw payrolls rise in July.
“Zooming out, the picture gets more encouraging, as just five metros have seen employment fall over the last three months while only two remain flat,” Zisfein said in a written statement. “There are only five metros with lower payrolls than six months ago, and only Cleveland has seen employment fall from a year ago.”
In other good news for the country’s economy, the Maximus Advisors Acceleration Index, which measures the depth of economic growth across metropolitan areas, also improved in July. The index crossed into positive territory for the first time in five months.
The index, according to Auction.com, measured 12 on a scale of -100 to 100. That’s better than the -7 that the index hit in June. The measure of 12 shows that 23 metropolitan areas are posting negative job-growth momentum. This means that while these areas may have added jobs, their job growth is slowing. The good news is that this makes six fewer metropolitan areas with negative momentum than in June.