REGIONAL — Manufacturing may no longer play the large role in northeast Minnesota’s economy that it once did, but it remains a pillar of good wages, steady work, and quiet reinvention across the region.
In 2024, the sector accounted for 9,231 jobs, or about 6.6 percent of total regional employment, the smallest manufacturing share among Minnesota’s six regions. Those figures don’t including the mining sector, which is in a separate economic category.
For those working in manufacturing in the region, the rewards are significant. The average manufacturing wage tops the regional average by roughly $16,000 a year, a premium of more than 27 percent. That wage gap speaks to the value of the work, the mix of technical skill and reliability that manufacturing still demands.
As the Minnesota Department of Employment and Economic Development’s latest report by Northeast Regional Labor Market Analyst Carson Gorecki notes, the region’s manufacturing workforce may be smaller than it was a generation ago, but it’s more specialized, more diversified, and in some ways, more resilient.
The long-term shifts are dramatic. Two decades ago, nearly a quarter of all manufacturing jobs were in paper manufacturing, another 16 percent in wood products, and 9 percent in machinery. Together, those three subsectors represented half of all manufacturing employment in the region.
By 2024, their combined share had fallen below 40 percent.
Paper manufacturing still leads the sector, but its employment base has shrunk by roughly 40 percent since 2004, a loss of about 1,060 jobs. Wood product manufacturing dropped even more sharply, down 65 percent, or 1,140 jobs. Machinery manufacturing moved the other way, adding nearly 500 jobs, an increase of 48 percent over the same period.
Despite those declines, paper remains both the largest and best-paying manufacturing subsector, accounting for about 16.8 percent of jobs and ranking as the only one in the region with an average wage in six figures.
If there’s one bright example of change, it’s transportation equipment manufacturing. With 1,470 jobs, the subsector has more than doubled since 2004, growing by 107 percent to become the region’s second-largest manufacturing employer. These are the kinds of jobs that reflect both industrial strength and technical evolution, building parts and products that move well beyond regional borders.
Another small but attention-grabbing area is beverage manufacturing. Fueled by the rise of craft brewing, it has grown from just 38 jobs in 2004 to 360 in 2024, an increase of nearly 850 percent. While that’s still a tiny fraction of total manufacturing employment, it demonstrates how even niche industries can contribute to local diversification.
Taken together, these shifts show that the manufacturing sector is not fading but changing form. The heavy products of the past, paper, lumber, and machinery, now share space with precision components, electronics, and food and beverage production. As Gorecki notes, what gets built in northeast Minnesota, and by whom, continues to evolve with market demand and innovation.
That evolution extends to wages, too. Since 2019, average pay across all industries in the region rose 25 percent, while manufacturing wages grew 21 percent. Some subsectors far outpaced the average. Computer and electronic product manufacturing saw wages jump 70 percent in five years, followed by miscellaneous manufacturing at 45 percent and apparel manufacturing at 43 percent.
These figures don’t tell the whole story. The manufacturing sector remains one of the region’s most reliable providers of middle-class wages, even if its size has diminished. The changing nature of work, more automation, fewer workers per output, and greater skill requirements, means that employment numbers alone don’t measure the full economic impact.
Demographically, the sector is facing familiar pressures. Workers aged 55 and older now make up more than 20 percent of the manufacturing workforce, compared to just 12.5 percent in 2004. The share of workers aged 45 to 54 has declined steadily since the Great Recession, meaning a growing portion of the workforce is nearing retirement. Yet there’s a faint countercurrent. While the overall share of jobs held by workers under 25 has fallen, it has grown slightly within manufacturing, suggesting that younger workers are beginning to find a foothold in manufacturing.
Gender patterns have been slower to shift. Manufacturing remains a majority-male sector, with men holding nearly 80 percent of the region’s manufacturing jobs in 2024. That’s a slightly larger share than twenty years ago. The median hourly wage for men in the sector was $33.65 last year, compared to $26.02 for women, a gap that points to persistent challenges in equity and representation.
Despite its smaller footprint, manufacturing continues to matter deeply to northeast Minnesota’s economy. It’s a sector defined by transformation more than decline.
In Gorecki’s words, “Products used throughout the state, nation and globe continue to get built in Northeast Minnesota.” Those products may have changed, but their importance hasn’t.