A New Survey Shows Some Businesses Struggling to Find Labor
According to a recent survey, some FM businesses continue to struggle to find and hire labor.
Partnering with the Federal Reserve 9th District in Minneapolis, the GFMEDC recently distributed a General Business Conditions Survey garnering 37 responses from businesses in Cass and Clay Counties. A total of 248 survey responses represented the entire 9th District.
The survey, which is distributed twice a year, analyzes data from the finance, insurance, real estate, manufacturing, professional services and other industries as they are most closely aligned with the industries of primary sector companies in the Fargo region.
Here is what we learned comparing the regional responses to July’s survey to those of the 9th district and previous surveys.
We’re used to seeing more optimism from the Region
From this July’s data, the FM Region is more pessimistic (regarding revenue and profitability) than we have seen in previous surveys, but still in-line with the rest of the 9th district.
Moderate to Significant Decline in Profits
Moderate to Significant Decline in Revenue
FM Labor Demand Still Strong
- More than half of those surveyed in FM are having difficulty finding and hiring labor (same as in January 2024).
- Companies in FM are still challenged to find talent with the right skills and experience (10% higher than January).
- Companies in FM are hiring twice as many (percentage-wise) as many full-time workers as the 9th district. Similar results were seen in January 2024.
- Hiring to replace turnover is 20% higher in the FM region compared to the 9th District according to the July survey. In January, the FM region was 13% higher than the 9th District.
How the GFMEDC is Responding
- We’re assisting local primary sector companies and investors with talent attraction efforts by curating lists of out-of-area candidates.
- We’re working on a company culture program, so that companies can learn from peer companies with great company culture to further their employee retention efforts.
- We’re deploying a large-scale marketing campaign to attract talent to the region, driving traffic to our website www.liveinfargo.com which provides information and data as well as available jobs to people considering the market.
With data partnerships like those with the Minneapolis Federal Reserve, the GFMEDC is positioned to utilize local data to continue delivering programming that can assist primary-sector businesses.
GFMEDC partners with the Federal Reserve 9th District (Minneapolis) to distribute its General Business Conditions Survey twice a year in January and July. This partnership gives us access to anonymized data from Cass and Clay County businesses to analyze and bring these insights to you.
Disclaimers:
The respondents to the General Business Conditions survey do not come from a random or representative sample, so results should be interpreted carefully.
This survey analysis comes from GFMEDS’s interpretation of the data, not from the Federal Reserve Bank of Minneapolis.
