When people hear the phrase “worker shortage,” they often think about businesses struggling to hire. But the issue is bigger than empty job listings. A worker shortage affects the entire economy—healthcare systems, construction timelines, hospitality staffing, agricultural output, and the ability of communities to grow. In Spring 2019, Voices Magazine highlighted Minnesota’s workforce challenge and connected it to a critical reality that is often ignored: large-scale deportations don’t just impact families—they can also trigger economic decline.
The point is not complicated. If a workforce shrinks too quickly, industries lose capacity. If industries lose capacity, states lose revenue, and the overall economic engine slows down.
The economic warning behind deportation patterns
The article notes that cities experiencing a large number of deportations have also experienced economic downturns. Expanding this view to the state level, the logic becomes even clearer: if Minnesota were to lose large shares of its workers in key industries—health care, agriculture, construction, leisure, and hospitality—economic output would decline. Less output means less revenue. It also means reduced stability for the communities that depend on those industries to survive.
Minnesota is near full employment, but the pipeline is tightening
A key workforce pressure is demographic. As baby boomers retire, Minnesota moves closer to a situation where there are more jobs than available workers. A referenced business report described Minnesota as being near full employment and expected to experience a shortage of workers as retirements increase.
This kind of shortage creates a chain reaction:
Employers struggle to fill roles
Productivity slows
Services become delayed
The cost of hiring rises
The pressure spreads from one industry to another
Growth projections show the gap
The article highlights projections showing Minnesota’s economic growth at 4.3% from 2014 to 2024, driven mostly by health care, compared with 6.5% nationally. While growth is still positive, Minnesota is moving slower than the national pace.
State Demographer Susan Brower’s statement is one of the most revealing lines in the discussion: without populations of color and foreign-born residents, Minnesota’s workforce size would be declining. That single sentence reframes the entire worker-shortage debate. It suggests that Minnesota’s ability to maintain workforce stability depends heavily on communities that are sometimes treated as “extra” rather than essential.
Minnesota’s immigrant growth is below national average
At the same time, the article notes immigrant growth in Minnesota is below the national average, and the percentage of 18–25-year-olds leaving the state is growing. If younger workers leave while the retirement wave grows, the pipeline naturally shrinks.
That leads to the most direct math in the article:
Between 2015 and 2020, Minnesota’s labor force is projected to grow by 21,000
During the same period, the number of jobs is projected to increase by 100,000
That difference is a serious warning. It suggests that job demand is rising far faster than worker supply. When the gap widens, shortages move from being an “HR issue” to an “economic stability issue.”
How big could the shortage become?
The article references an estimate from Real-Time Talent’s executive director stating that Minnesota was already beginning to experience a worker shortage—and that by 2022, the shortage could grow to 278,000.
But the most important part is what comes next: that estimate is without heightened deportation. The article adds a scenario that shows how policy can intensify the shortage: deporting half of Minnesota’s 59,000 undocumented family breadwinners could raise Minnesota’s total worker shortage in 2022 to 307,500.
This is not a small difference. It’s a workforce-level shock.
Why “breadwinners” matters in the conversation
The article specifically uses the phrase “undocumented family breadwinners.” That wording matters because it suggests these individuals are not disconnected from the economy—they are actively supporting households. They work, earn, spend, rent, buy groceries, pay bills, and contribute to the everyday economic cycle. Removing large portions of breadwinners from the system disrupts both workforce supply and consumer demand.
When households lose a breadwinner, spending decreases. When spending decreases, local businesses feel it. When businesses feel it, job creation slows. The shortage becomes more complicated and harder to reverse.
The bigger takeaway
The strongest insight from this piece is that the worker shortage isn’t just about recruiting strategy. It’s about long-term labor sustainability. Minnesota’s future workforce strength is directly tied to:
demographic shifts (retirements and youth outmigration)
the growth rate of immigrant communities
whether policies shrink or strengthen the labor supply
If Minnesota wants stable growth, it has to recognize that workforce strength is not automatic. It must be protected and supported.
Closing thought
A worker shortage is not only about empty roles—it’s about the speed at which a state can build, serve, heal, grow, and compete. And when the supply of workers shrinks through accelerated deportation, the economic consequences can ripple through every industry. If the workforce is the engine, then removing essential workers is not a political argument—it is an economic risk.
