Business

Summer job season is here and many teens and young adults are looking for a chance to earn money, gain experience and build skills.

MPR News host Angela Davis and her guests talk about the state of the summer job market for young workers in Minnesota. They’ll discuss where opportunities exist, what employers are looking for and how job seekers can stand out in a competitive hiring environment.

Guests:

• Mark Brinda is the Workforce Development Manager for the City of Minneapolis.

• Oriane Casale is the assistant director of the Labor Market Information Office for the Minnesota Department of Employment and Economic Development.

• Chris Farrell is a senior economics contributor for MPR News and Marketplace.

During the show, the guests shared this job search resource: ​Jobs in Minnesota | Career Resources | CareerForce.MN.gov

Subscribe to the MPR News with Angela Davis podcast on: Apple Podcasts, Spotify or RSS.

Use the audio player above to listen to the full conversation.

---

---

Life is coming full circle for the new chief financial officer of Mankato Clinic, as he was delivered by one of the clinic’s obstetricians and saw a pediatrician at Mankato Clinic as a child.

Brandon Janike, 32, returned to the Mankato area last week to help lead one of southern Minnesota’s largest independent, physician-owned healthcare clinics. He was raised on his family’s dairy farm in rural Waldorf in Waseca County.

Janike was delivered by Dr. Mark Taylor, a Mankato Clinic obstetrician who has since retired, at Immanuel-St. Joseph’s Hospital in Mankato. Mayo Clinic Health System bought Immanuel-St. Joseph’s in March of 1996 and renamed the hospital In 2011, but Mankato clinic’s obstetricians still deliver babies there today.

As a child, Janike continued receiving care at Mankato Clinic from his pediatrician, Dr. Donald Putzier, who also is now retired.

Janike earned a bachelor’s degree in athletic training from Minnesota State University, Mankato in 2016. He then worked as an intern under current Mankato Clinic CEO Aaron Johnson. Janike went on to work at Twin Cities Orthopedics and then for seven years at Revo Health in the Twin Cities, where he most recently was the vice president of revenue cycle.

Even though he never strayed too far from his Mankato and his nearby hometown in his decade away, Janike said he didn’t think an opportunity to return to the area would ever come to be.

“I never thought I would have the opportunity to come back,” Janike told MPR News. “When this [position] became available, it’s pretty much a no-brainer, because now I get to help a community. I get to help a clinic that raised me. The opportunity to strengthen rural healthcare in the place that raised me is incredibly meaningful.”

Janike said he’s interested in serving patients in rural communities and making sure they’re able to receive vital medical care. He said he’s troubled by the growing number of rural hospitals that have been closing in recent years, and the dwindling number of physicians willing to come to work in these smaller communities.

It’s important to keep healthcare close to home and that it stays accessible, he added.

“I want to make sure that we’re in a position that we can be around for the next 110 years, and the 110 years after that,” Janike said. “We have a good opportunity to set the footing for that and ground level for that right now.”

Mankato Clinic CEO Johnson praised his former intern, saying in a news release that he’s excited to have Janike join the team.

“Over the years I’ve watched him earn the trust of the people around him, navigate complex challenges, and lead with a steady approach that puts relationships first,” Johnson said. “Bringing someone like Brandon back to southern Minnesota and to Mankato Clinic is incredibly meaningful for our organization, our staff, and the future of local healthcare in this region.”

---

---

It can be difficult for food pantries to offer fresh produce, which is more expensive to buy than canned goods. It’s a problem that Churches United, a Moorhead-based nonprofit that runs a local food pantry, has run into.

“Most food pantries run on donations, so, when you start looking at where you’re going to spend your funds, obviously spending them on those processed foods, those shelf stable foods, your bang for your buck just goes farther,” Churches United CEO and Pastor Devlyn Brooks said.

Brooks added that when their pantry, named Dorothy Day Food Pantry, does get produce donations, it’s usually from big box stores that are donating food close to its expiration. In other cases, donations come from people who just grew the produce in their own garden.

Leadership at Grand Farm, a Fargo-based ag research center, heard about the pantry’s plight last Fall and decided to grow half an acre of sweet corn for the pantry. It used a plot of sweet corn it had available in its nearby Wheatland, N.D., campus.

“So this was a good opportunity for us to find a key partner that would put this nutritious sweet corn to good use,” Grand Farm ecosystem director Andrew Jason said.

The half-acre could yield anywhere from 7,000 to 10,000 ears of sweet corn. Brooks said the gift is well appreciated, especially as the group expects more people to use food pantry services this year.

“In May alone, we also distributed just under 50,000 pounds of food in one month, and that number already is looking to be trending higher in June,” Brooks said.

The corn will be ready for harvest in August. The harvested food will help feed the nearly 1,500 households the Dorothy Day Food Pantry serves each month, according to Brooks.

“We never get the opportunity to provide produce on that scale,” Brooks said. “This is an amazing gift.”

---

---

The American job market continues to show surprising strength — good news for President Donald Trump who has taken a beating in the polls over the surging gasoline prices that followed U.S. and Israeli attacks on Iran.

Employers added 172,000 jobs in May – roughly double what forecasters had expected – and the unemployment rate remained at a low 4.3 percent, the Labor Department reported Friday.

Job growth was down slightly last month from a revised 179,000 in April.

Hiring has bounced back this year from a miserable 2025, showing resilience in the face of economic uncertainty and painfully high energy prices since the Iran war started in late February.

The job gains are broad-based. Local governments added 55,000 workers, restaurants and bars 48,000, healthcare companies 35,000.

In another sign of job market strength, Labor Department revisions added a combined 93,000 jobs in March and April. Job growth averaged 188,000 a month from March through May, marking the best three months of hiring since early 2024.

“The hiring recession is over. American firms are hiring again,’’ said Heather Long, chief economist at Navy Federal Credit Union. “The job rebound is happening in almost every industry … This is encouraging news for job seekers and for the U.S. economy. The labor market has stabilized and is showing early signs of a genuine rebound.’’

With just five months to go before consequential midterm elections in the U.S., Americans have grown increasingly frustrated by rising costs, and it’s unclear if the strong job numbers this year will change their gloomy view of the economy.

Inflation data last week showed that in addition to gasoline, prices for groceries, clothing and electricity are also on the rise, indicating that inflation may be growing more entrenched.

Polls show that Trump’s approval rating on the economy is falling sharply after being reelected largely on the promise of taming inflation.

And despite the pickup in hiring, wage gains were modest. Average hourly wages rose 0.3 percent from April and 3.4 percent from May 2025.

Many young people are still finding it tough to catch a break on a job, and workers who have been laid off have struggled to find another. Nearly 28 percent of the unemployed in April had been jobless for more than six months, the largest share since December 2021.

But the labor market is clearly improving. Last year, employers added just 9,700 jobs a month, the fewest outside of a recession since 2002. Hiring has rebounded, averaging 114,000 new jobs a month so far this year.

Friday’s report “really is a positive surprise, particularly given the headwinds from the Iran conflict, which clearly led to much higher energy prices and which are going to act to slow economic activity to some degree,’’ said Ryan Nunn, research director at Yale University’s Budget Lab.

The economy, Nunn said, has been boosted by a surge in investment in artificial intelligence. Also helping are lower tariff rates since President Donald Trump has effectively lowered the massive import taxes he imposed last year – and the Supreme Court in February struck down his most sweeping levies, setting the stage for businesses to get back money they’d paid.

Big tax refunds — the product of Trump’s 2025 tax cuts — have given the economy a lift, offsetting the impact of higher energy prices. But the refunds have mostly been pocketed, and gasoline prices have remained above $4 per gallon since March.

U.S. financial markets retreated after the jobs data was released Friday. Healthy hiring has raised the odds that the Fed’s next move will be an interest rate increase, a sharp change from the start of the year when central bank officials had still penciled in two rate cuts for 2026.

Wall Street now expects a rate hike in December, which would be sharply at odds with Trump’s repeated demands for a cut. An increase by the Fed could lead, over time, to higher borrowing costs for mortgages, auto loans, and business loans.

“Higher rates are coming, particularly when inflation is above target and clearly moving in the wrong direction,” said Dario Perkins, an economist at TS Lombard. “The only question is when.”

Uncle Giuseppe’s Marketplace, which operates 12 grocery stores across New York and New Jersey, is on a hiring spree. President Mike Nelson announced last fall that he wanted to add 1,000 workers over the next year, pushing the company’s payroll over 3,500.

Nelson says his problem is finding skilled workers.

“We’re looking for a butcher who can cut meat in the store and engage with our customers and give them cooking ideas and speak to them about what makes the product special,” he said. “You don’t find that everywhere now.”

Like other grocery stores, Uncle Giuseppe’s has benefited as Americans cut back on dinners out as the cost of living marches higher. The company is marketing specials to lure inflation-scarred shoppers, like a $39.99 chicken Parmesan and pasta meal for a family of four that includes a loaf of bread and a salad.

Michael Wieder, the co-founder of the baby products maker Lalo, is also hiring a few new workers.

Wieder is feeling optimistic because he expects $2 million in tariff refunds after the trade policies of President Trump were shot down by the courts. He is planning to use that money for hiring, but gotten less than $50,000 back to date.

He has roughly 20 employees who work in marketing, operations, customer service and other areas for his New York company. He said he’s looking for applicants that will embrace artificial intelligence. Lalo has already been using AI tools in areas like marketing and plans to launch an AI tool on Monday that helps parents potty train their children.

“We’re evaluating the type of people we hire in this rapidly changing environment,” he said.

---

---

Back in 2020, Kobi Gregory began making scented candles to cope with the stress of distance learning in high school. What started as a hobby quickly became a business with help from her mom, Tasha Harris.

Today, Kobi Co. has a downtown Minneapolis storefront, sells signature candles paired with curated playlists, and hosts popular candle-making workshops.

MPR News host Angela Davis talks with Kobi and Tasha about what it’s like to work together and how they spread self-care through their business.

Guests:

• Kobi Gregory is co-founder of Kobi Co., a candle and wellness company in downtown Minneapolis.

• Tasha Harris is co-founder of Kobi Co. and Kobi Gregory’s mother and business partner.

Do you know a Power Pair?

“Power Pairs” is a series featuring prominent Minnesotans in a close relationship. You may know of them separately but they reveal a new side of themselves when they sit down together. Listen to past interviews here and submit your idea for a future Power Pair here.

Subscribe to the MPR News with Angela Davis podcast on: Apple Podcasts, Spotify or RSS.

Use the audio player above to listen to the full conversation.    

---

---

Set a ball down on one end of the Audubon fire station and it’ll start rolling. The sinking foundation will carry it past the firetrucks that barely squeeze into the garage doors. And it will pass the racks that are stuffed with firefighting gear because there’s nowhere else to put them.

Before long, the ball might hit the hall’s torn back walls, where insulation is poking out and officials say mold is spreading. But, most likely, the ball will be stopped in its tracks by the cracks in the garage floor.

The station was built in 1963, the same year the northwestern Minnesota town was incorporated. And the town has needed a new one for decades, said firefighter and former Chief Chris Wiedenmeyer.

“It doesn’t meet any sort of standards for safety,” he said.

He’s particularly concerned about the diesel exhaust from the trucks.

Since the trucks are parked right in front of his firefighting gear, Wiedenmeyer’s worried about the carcinogens that latch onto his equipment every time the truck starts. In a modern fire station, the gear should be in a dedicated, ventilated storage area.

“It probably won’t be long when cancer will pass as the number one leading cause of death for active firefighters, and a lot of these are being tied back to … what you’re exposed to in your own fire hall,” he said.

Replacing the station would cost $3 million, a heavy lift for a town of less than 600 people. So the city council unanimously approved going forward with putting a 0.5 percent sales tax on the ballot. But first, they’d need approval from the Minnesota Legislature.

Unfortunately for Audubon, and more than 30 other local governments with similar plans for implementing new sales taxes, the tax bill passed by the Legislature did not approve any requests for sales taxes this year.

“I basically took it — when it failed again this time — that ‘nobody cares about you,’” Wiedenmeyer said. “‘You’re just taken for granted. You’re going to show up, you’re going to do that job, and we don’t care. We’re not going to support you.’ And that’s a real kick in the gut.”

What happened?

State Sen. Rob Kupec, DFL-Moorhead, introduced the proposal for an Audubon sales tax to the Senate’s Committee on Taxes.

“Some of these fire halls are just outdated, and there’s lots of them across the state,” he said. “And instead of them coming and asking for a bonding request, they’re looking for a way to fund it themselves.”

One advantage of implementing a sales tax, as opposed to increasing property taxes, is that it allows cities to earn money from people other than residents, such as visitors.

Kupec said the committee only approves requests if they have some sort of regional impact. For example, Audubon’s fire station serves multiple townships outside of city limits.

“Everything basically that came before us that met that criteria, the Senate tax committee OK’d,” he said.

The Senate committee’s version of the tax bill approved 37 local tax proposals, including Audubon’s. Other proposals included taxes to upgrade parks in Vergas, build a new judicial center in Waseca County and replace a Public Works facility in Robbinsdale.

The Minnesota House Taxes Committee also heard proposals, and co-chair Rep. Greg Davids, R-Preston, supported them.

“There are some very, very important ones,” he said. “The state of Minnesota wasn’t able this year to give any more money to … cities. So I was of the opinion that, well, we can help these cities by allowing them a local option sales tax to build a fire hall, to build a community center, to build all the different things we looked at.”

But when it was time to finally pass a tax bill at the end of session, the House’s version hadn’t made it out of the committee. After the closed-door negotiations between the Senate and House settled, the omnibus tax bill passed without any approved sales taxes.

Davids wasn’t pleased.

“We put together a very good list of local option sales taxes,” he said. “They were vetted before the committee, and the Democrats in the Senate, the Republicans in the Senate and the Republicans in the House supported the local option sales taxes,” he said.

That leaves one group.

“At the end of the day, the Democrats in the House killed it,” Davids said. “You’d have to ask them why, because no one can figure it out.”

Rep. Aisha Gomez, DFL-Minneapolis, is the other co-chair of the House Tax Committee. She did not respond to MPR’s repeated requests for comment, but at an April hearing, she noted that sales taxes are considered regressive.

That means people with lower incomes pay a higher share of their earnings on the tax because they have less money to start with.

She also said funding public services through local sales taxes reinforces inequities between communities.

“Should only people who live with malls in their community or (a) big retail sales base have community centers? Have fire stations? Have the things in the bill?” Gomez said. “Or should we actually think about how it is that we equitably fund the basic public services that people need in a more thoughtful way?”

After Gomez finished her statement, Davids asked the testifying representative from Crosby, Minn., if the 2,000-person town had a mall, playing off of Gomez’s remark that only big towns with malls can raise money through a sales tax.

The representative from Crosby said no. No mall. But they still wanted a new sales tax to renovate a library, a community center, a park and the town’s city hall.

A long-running debate

Debates over local sales taxes are not new. Minnesota overhauled its tax system in the 1970s, when a series of laws dubbed the “Minnesota Miracle” reduced local taxes by providing more state school funding. It also created the modern Local Government Aid program.

“They put a prohibition in that cities could not enact other types of taxes, and then in the ‘90s this started to switch, where cities were coming to the legislature to get one-off authorization for special projects or different needs,” said Beth Johnston, lobbyist with the League of Minnesota Cities.

She said that’s when the framework was established that cities would have to get approval from the Legislature first before putting the idea before local voters. The process has changed a few times since, but the framework has largely stayed the same.

But the number of requests has been increasing. In 2023, lawmakers approved a record high of 32 new sales taxes.

“They also placed a moratorium on cities being able to come to the Legislature until this most recent legislative session,” Johnston said. “And in that meantime, there was a work group that came together to put recommendations for general authority for cities to collect sales taxes.”

Nothing came of those recommendations, so the two-year moratorium came and went without any changes.

Today, opinion is still split on what to do next. In her statement during the April hearing, Gomez said funding for public services should come out of a “statewide pot.”

By contrast, Kupec said the current system is a good one because it allows local governments to fund projects without costing the rest of the state, and local governments still need to win approval from their voters.

The League of Minnesota Cities wants to go further and give local governments more authority to fund certain capital projects themselves.

“The current process is definitely opaque,” Johnston said, “which (makes it) harder for cities to be able to plan and budget their capital needs.”

Davids would support the projects again next session but said success will probably depend on the result of this year’s elections.

“The Legislature will have a different makeup next year,” he said. “I’d say if the DFL is in control of the House under their current legislators, good luck.”

In Audubon’s case, the city also isn’t sure what to do next. City officials said it will be prohibitively difficult to pay for a new fire station without a sales tax.

But Wiedenmeyer is pretty much over it. The fight for a new station is the main reason he stepped down as chief.

“It was a lot of time and a lot of extra work, meetings, township battles, funding battles, everything else,” he said. “All that extra stuff just kind of took a toll on me.”

Today, he’s still on the force as a volunteer firefighter, where he makes $15 a call. But the ongoing unaddressed health risks posed by the old station are weighing down his morale now, too.

“You come home, and you look at your family, and wonder, ‘Why keep doing it?’” he said. “When you get that thought in your head that nobody else cares, why should we keep doing it?”

---

---