Minnesota's vein of miners dries up

[star2city]

There have been a number of threads of ND's population loss and need for economic development, but relatively little has been written about the economic/population challenges facing most of the geographic areas of Minnesota. Except for the Lake Country and the I-35 corridor (including Rochester), most of Northern, Western, and Southern Minnesota is struggling.

In Minnesota, cities (outside the TC region) that seem to be successfully moving forward are Rochester, Duluth (after a long slumber), and maybe Brainerd, Marshall, and Bemidji. Even towns with relatively high-paying corporate jobs , such as Thief River, Roseau, Warroad, (with Arctic Cat, Digi, Polaris, and Marvin Windows) are not growing signficantly in population. To get relocations from outside an area, it seems a city really needs to have not only have well-paying jobs, but at least 50,000 people and be viewed as having cultural/ education/ medical/ recreational outlets. With almost all of these attributes concentrated in the Cities, the dilemmas confronting much of outstate Minnesota seems to get overlooked.

This article, orginally in the Wall Street Journal, discusses this issue in the Iron Range.

http://www.post-gazette.com/pg/05209/545130.stm

The Iron Range is booming again. For college students here, that means one thing: some of the dirtiest, sweatiest and best-paying summer jobs anywhere.

For generations, summer mining jobs have helped young men and women buy their first cars, make down payments on houses, and start their careers as miners.

But though the mines are blasting away this summer, rattling windows and lifting spirits, this year's students aren't like their parents or grandparents. Many don't plan to stick around past summer. Instead, they're putting their earnings toward college tuition so they can leave the northern Minnesota region known as the Iron Range.

[Basil]

clearly the info in the article comes from the corp. info end of things as the college summer programs ended about 7 years ago and only a handful get hired in the summer nodays...

There have been a number of threads of ND's population loss and need for economic development, but relatively little has been written about the economic/population challenges facing most of the geographic areas of Minnesota.  Except for the Lake Country and the I-35 corridor (including Rochester), most of Northern, Western, and Southern Minnesota is struggling.

In Minnesota, cities (outside the TC region) that seem to be successfully moving forward are Rochester, Duluth (after a long slumber), and maybe Brainerd, Marshall, and Bemidji.  Even towns with relatively high-paying corporate jobs , such as Thief River, Roseau, Warroad, (with Arctic Cat, Digi, Polaris, and Marvin Windows) are not growing signficantly in population.  To get relocations from outside an area, it seems a city really needs to have not only have well-paying jobs, but at least 50,000 people and be viewed as having cultural/ education/ medical/ recreational outlets.  With almost all of these attributes concentrated in the Cities, the dilemmas confronting much of outstate Minnesota seems to get overlooked.

This article, orginally in the Wall Street Journal, discusses this issue in the Iron Range.

http://www.post-gazette.com/pg/05209/545130.stm

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