CareerForce offers encouragement to Minnesota’s health care provider organizations.
The bottom line: Minnesota's health care industry bounced back strong from the pandemic with over 530,000 jobs – 6.4% above pre-pandemic levels. But beneath this success story lies a critical staffing crisis that's reshaping how health care employers need to think about recruitment and retention.
The Recovery Story
Good news first: Minnesota's health care sector is thriving. Job vacancies dropped over 39% from 2021's peak (52,340) to 31,699 in 2024, while employment reached 529,514 people – 6.8% above pre-pandemic levels and now over 18% of all Minnesota jobs.
The Twin Cities area led this recovery, surpassing pre-pandemic employment levels in 2022 and boasting 9.1% growth since 2019. Four of Minnesota's six regions now exceed their pre-pandemic health care employment, with Southeast Minnesota joining the recovery in 2023 and Central and Northwest in 2024.
Where the Jobs Are Growing
The growth isn't happening equally across all health care subsectors. Social assistance is the clear winner, growing 18.1% statewide since 2019. Services for the Elderly and Persons with Disabilities now accounts for over 53% of total Social Assistance employment, reflecting an aging population with a preference for remaining in the community.
Meanwhile, traditional health care delivery is seeing more modest growth:
- Ambulatory care: +6.0% (outpatient clinics, specialty practices, and a growing home health sector)
- Nursing homes and residential care: +3.5%
- Hospitals: Just +0.2%
The Staffing Crisis Hiding in Plain Sight
Here's what should keep Health Care & Social Assistance sector HR professionals up at night: As of 2024, health care has 31,699 job vacancies – over one-quarter of all openings statewide and 44% more than Accommodation & Food Service, despite offering higher median wages ($23.07 vs. $15.02), according to the latest DEED Job Vacancy Survey. With 18% of state employment but a 6.2% vacancy rate, health care is struggling more than the 4.3% rate across all industries.
In terms of occupations, four of the top 15 occupations with the most job vacancies in Minnesota are health care jobs, and all are direct care positions: Nursing Assistants, Personal Care Aides, Registered Nurses, and Licensed Practical Nurses.
Vacant Nursing Assistant and Personal Care Aide Positions are a Primary Constraint
Nursing Assistants and Personal Care Aides represent the biggest bottleneck. Despite offering competitive wages compared to other positions with high vacancies and minimal experience requirements, these positions have more vacancies than even Registered Nurses. The impact is severe: nursing homes can't fill beds without caregivers, creating system-wide capacity constraints as Minnesota's population ages.
This isn't just a numbers problem – it's a capacity problem for the entire health care system. Nursing homes and residential care facilities can't admit patients to empty beds when they don't have staff to care for them. Hospitals are often not able to discharge patients because no facility can take them. With Minnesota's rapidly aging population, this bottleneck is only going to get worse.
Except for Southeast (home to Mayo Clinic), Greater Minnesota has highest health care employment in the Hospitals and Nursing & Residential Care subsectors, making them especially vulnerable to the nursing assistant shortage. While Nursing & Residential Care employment is down 2.5% in Greater Minnesota since 2019, the job vacancy rate for Nursing Assistants is 16.2% – much higher than the (still high) 13.7% in the Twin Cities. Thus, the decline in Greater Minnesota’s Nursing & Residential Care employment is directly connected to the vacant Nursing Assistant positions: The decline in employment is due to a lack of caregivers, not a lack of demand.
Regional Variations Matter for Recruitment
If you're recruiting health care workers, location matters more than ever:
Twin Cities advantage: With the lowest overall job vacancy rates in the state, the metro area is successfully attracting health care talent from other places. The diverse health care landscape offers career advancement opportunities that smaller markets can't match.
Greater Minnesota challenges: Rural regions are struggling particularly with specialist recruitment. Since 2019, Ambulatory care services employment declined in Southwest Minnesota (-12.1%) and Northwest Minnesota (-1.2%) as these areas can't compete for the specialists that drive outpatient growth.
What This Means for Your Hiring Strategy
Access the less-tapped workforce: Youth, black, indigenous, and people of color (BIPOC), males, and persons with disabilities generally have higher unemployment rates than other groups. Additionally, seniors have lower labor force participation rates, often by choice, but many retirees may want or need to “unretire.”
Act fast on competitive positions: With still-elevated job vacancies in key health care occupations, the competition for qualified candidates is fierce. Speed in your hiring process can make the difference.
Expand your geographic search: If you're in the Twin Cities, you have an advantage in attracting talent from across the nation and world. Rural facilities may need to think creatively about expanding recruitment, increasing retention and developing local talent pipelines.
Address the nursing assistant pipeline: Whether you employ nursing assistants directly or partner with facilities that do, this shortage affects the entire health care system. Supporting training programs and career pathways could be a strategic investment.
Looking Forward
Minnesota's health care employment recovery masks significant structural challenges that require strategic workforce planning. The data from DEED's 2024 Job Vacancy Survey makes clear that while we've recovered to pre-pandemic numbers of health care jobs, we're still struggling with matching workers and open positions – particularly in essential direct care roles. Employers who get ahead of these trends – by improving compensation, enhancing career pathways, and building stronger talent pipelines – will be better positioned to navigate Minnesota's evolving health care labor market and meet the growing demand from our aging population.
Data sources: Minnesota Department of Employment and Economic Development (DEED) 2024 Job Vacancy Survey, Quarterly Census of Employment and Wages.
