Retail Trade in Central Minnesota

Bricks-and-mortar stores have been struggling nationwide in recent years, but retail jobs are still growing in central Minnesota.

Retail employment and businesses in the area grew at a faster pace than any other Minnesota region in 2017, according to a story by Luke Greiner in Trends magazine.

Altogether, the region had just over 36,000 retail jobs last year. Central Minnesota has added 760 net new retail jobs since the industry bottomed out in 2010 in the wake of the recession.

The largest-employing retail subsector in central Minnesota is general merchandise stores (7,432 jobs), followed by food and beverage stores (6,600 jobs) and motor vehicle parts dealers (5,300 jobs). Together these three subsectors account for more than half of all retail trade jobs in the region.

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