Changing population trends

affect future of workforce

Workshop

examines changing trends and impacts

on local communities

By KURT NESBITT

Journal Staff Writer

NEW ULM -- Brown County must learn to adapt to a changing population and a changing workforce if it wants to retain population and encourage growth.

That message was delivered at a workshop Thursday attended by nearly 80 people from Brown County, including elected leaders, business people and ordinary citizens.

The group learned about how major cities contribute to declining state and county populations, trends in state and local demographics and their effects on a region's workforce. Several representatives of Marshall, Worthington and Sibley County shared their experiences.

Dr. Joseph Amato, dean of Southwest State University's Center for Rural Regional Studies in Marshall, told the audience about an experience he had in Omaha. In that town, one business, ConAgra, shapes most of the town. As a result, Omaha has art museums and a vibrant warehouse district that attracts most of Nebraska's young people. He said that 1.3 million of that state's 1.8 million-person population lives in or near Omaha.

"Omaha is a vortex," he said. "It sucks into itself the rest of the state."

Amato used the Omaha anecdote as an example of how a large city looking to maintain its population can result in the decline of smaller towns and rural areas. He said some of its older neighborhoods are now home to newer ethnic groups like Hispanics and Asians.

Smaller towns face three challenges, Amato said.

The first is that many populations outside metropolitan areas are aging; younger people are leaving for other places and those small towns often function as bedroom communities.

Major cities are expected to supply better education and medical care, among other things, and that translates into a city having to "do more with less," he said.

Amato said the third problem is that smaller towns often miss out on jobs, wages and opportunities, which is difficult for smaller, more rural areas to overcome. He said that Marshall has seen turnover in downtown businesses and the Lyon County government; however, at the same time, the Marshall city government has stayed together.

"We want the amenities, the opportunity and the jobs," said Amato. "But we also know the continuity of security, of faith, and a lot of personal attention you can't get in a larger city, and there's real tension there."

Minnesota State Demographer Tom Gillaspy talked about the 2000 Census and its importance in explaining social change. He said Minnesota's population had grown by 12.4 percent since the last census; the national growth rate is 15.2 percent.

Minnesota has grown faster in the last 10 years than in the past two decades. Gillaspy said the population grew in metropolitan areas over the last decade because the number of births was higher than the number of deaths. Meanwhile, mainly in the southwestern and western ends of the state, the opposite was true -- more died than were born, so populations in counties like Lac Qui Parle stayed on the decline.

In the 1990s, Gillaspy said, more people moved to Minnesota that in the 1980s or 1970s. In fact, there were more people from California that moved to Minnesota than there were Minnesotans that moved to California. One of the main reasons was a strong national economy, in which Minnesota was "one of the stars," Gillaspy said.

The main area of growth, Gillaspy said, was the area from Rochester up through the Twin Cities, through St. Cloud to Brainerd. That growth was mainly concentrated in three areas -- the Twin Cities, the inner ring of surrounding suburbs and the suburbs outside the I-494/1-694 beltway. Those outer suburbs have seen growth that has expanded into Wisconsin. While other Midwestern cities like St. Louis, Milwaukee, Detroit and Philadelphia saw declines, Minneapolis, St. Paul, Chicago and New York City saw growth.

"Some areas expanded rapid growth after long-term losses," he said.

Brown County fared about average during that decade -- it didn't loose many people and didn't gain many people either. Gillaspy said Scott County is the most rapidly expanding county in Minnesota. That growth has spilled into Le Sueur and Nicollet counties because of the new Bloomington Ferry Bridge, which made commutes faster. Gillaspy said growth in North Mankato and Mankato also contributed to the growth.

While that population has expanded outward from the metro area, it has also meant that the definition of race is changing.

"There are many people in this nation that believe it's something that doesn't change," he said. "That's wrong."

Up until the last 10 years, that definition hasn't needed to change for about 20 years.

"It is not a biological, anthropological or cultural concept," said Gillaspy. "It is a social-political construct, and it's useful for certain programs. In this country, the definition of race has nothing to do with anything else in the world."

A panel ­ comprised of Sibley County Economic Development Director Steve Renquist, Judge Jeffrey Flynn from Worthington and Carol Marshall and Jackie Zerr of the Marshall Human Rights Commission ­ spoke briefly about challenges that their areas face and how government and business have attempted to adapt to a changing workforce.

Sibley County has seen growth after a 30-year population decline, but it is having a tough time keeping up with housing, work force availability, Renquist said. The county also saw a "non-traditional" work force, employer dissatisfaction with job skills and a realization of that need by community leaders and educators. He recommended several strategies for coping with the issue. Among them, he proposed the idea of acculturation, where older cultures adapt to new ones rather than assimilate them.

"It takes a community to raise a workforce," Renquist said.

Flynn talked about language barrier problems he sees in his court and the changing culture in Worthington. He said several business in downtown Worthington have signs written in three languages.

"The language barrier is the main issue in Worthington," Flynn said. "We have 518 students in the English-as-a-Second Language program in our schools."

After round-table discussions centered on the issues of education, housing, health care, agriculture and the workforce, group leaders agreed that there was an overall workforce shortage in trades and agriculture. They also saw language barriers, smaller families and lack of motivation in younger generations.