ST. PAUL -- The state has a record number of job openings. The Minnesota Department of Employment and Economic Development says there are over 214,000 open jobs as of the fourth quarter of 2021.

With fewer than 93,000 unemployed workers statewide in the fourth quarter, that means there are twice as many open positions as unemployed people.

The state's labor force participation rate is at 68.3 percent as of April of this year, which is still below the 70.8 percent we had prior to the pandemic in February of 2020.

The seven-county Twin Cities metro had nearly 127,000 of the job vacancies while greater Minnesota had just over 87,000.

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Statewide, health care and social assistance had 24 percent of all job vacancies with more the 52,000 openings. Retail accounted for 19 percent of the openings with nearly 40,000 jobs.

DEED says 32 percent of the vacancies require some level of post-secondary education, which means two-thirds require no education beyond a high school diploma. They say about 30 percent of the openings are for part-time employment of 35 hours a week or less.

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