(Reuters) – Vice President Kamala Harris, the Democratic nominee to succeed U.S. President Joe Biden, has selected Minnesota Governor Tim Walz, a champion of progressive economic policies such as universal school meals, to be her running mate in the Nov. 5 election.
Here is a high-level look at how the state’s economy has done since Walz became governor in January 2019.
GROWTH
The Minnesota economy has trailed overall U.S. growth under Walz, data from the U.S. Bureau of Economic Analysis shows.
Heading into the COVID-19 recession in early 2020, the state economy essentially matched the U.S. growth rate. Since the recovery began in the second quarter of 2020, state growth has lagged national growth by 5.5 percentage points.
EMPLOYMENT
Job growth in Minnesota under Walz has not kept up with the U.S. pace, especially after the COVID-19 job losses in early 2020, according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics.
Total nonfarm payrolls have grown by just 0.5% – 14,700 jobs – since Walz became governor versus 5.8% for the U.S. overall. The state has not fully recovered all the jobs lost during the health crisis, with payrolls down by 15,400 since February 2020, one of more than a dozen states still to have a COVID-19 jobs deficit.
UNEMPLOYMENT
Joblessness – at 2.9% as of June – has been notably lower in Minnesota than in across the U.S., BLS data shows.
The unemployment rate peaked at 11.2% in the spring of 2020, 3.6 percentage points below the national peak, and it has remained low – not rising above 3% since December 2021.
That dynamic is the result of a drop in the ranks of the unemployed – down 10% since Walz assumed office – alongside essentially no net growth in the state’s workforce.
PERSONAL INCOME
Income growth in Minnesota has kept pace with the national average during Walz’s administration, climbing 30% through the first quarter of 2024, the latest BEA data available at the state level.
INFLATION
Like the rest of the country, Minnesota experienced the wave of inflation that arose during the pandemic.
It has eased notably faster in the state’s largest metro area tracked by BLS price data – Minneapolis-St. Paul-Bloomington – than in the rest of the country.
As of May, the latest month for which BLS data is available, the annual inflation rate in that area was 2.6% versus 3.3% nationally.
(Reporting by Dan Burns; Editing by Paul Simao)
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