Greater MSP presents regional indicators: gains in inclusion, housing strengths, warning signs on innovation and growth
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Summary
Greater MSP presented its 10-year regional indicators dashboard to the Metropolitan Council, reporting improvements in racial inclusion and housing affordability relative to peer regions but noting slowing economic growth, reduced venture-capital flows and declining net migration of young adults.
Greater MSP on Oct. 22 presented the 2025 update of its regional indicators dashboard to the Metropolitan Council, highlighting decade-long trends across 58 indicators benchmarked against 11 peer metropolitan areas.
Presenters Nathan Arnosti and Julia Silvis said the dashboard aims to give civic leaders and the public a holistic view of the region’s performance. Their analysis identified four headlines: promising signals on racial inclusion alongside remaining inequities; housing and infrastructure as competitive assets for livability; the region remaining a good place for workers; and slowing economic growth and innovation.
Greater MSP said that, over the past decade, the employment gap between white workers and workers of color narrowed from roughly 15% to about 6% and that the wage gap narrowed from about 32% to 23%. Presenters said the poverty rate among residents of color fell from about 25% in 2015 to roughly 13% in 2025; they described these as notable improvements but said significant disparities remain when data are disaggregated.
On livability, Greater MSP reported that the region has relatively low median home prices among its peers, a low apartment-rent growth rate compared with peers, high park-access rankings and the highest share of workers with commutes under 30 minutes. On workforce measures, Greater MSP said about 70% of jobs in the region pay a family-sustaining wage (using MIT Living Wage estimates), placing the region near the top of its peer set on that metric.
But Greater MSP flagged concerns about economic dynamism: regional gross product growth has slowed to about 2% year over year and job growth to about 2.9% — positions that rank near the lower third of the peer set. Venture-capital investment and patenting rates have declined relative to 2015 levels, and net in-migration of young adults (age 25–34) dropped from about 13,000 net new arrivals annually in 2015 to about 7,800 more recently, the presenters said.
Council members asked for clarifications and discussed how the indicators could guide policy, workforce and economic-development programs. Council members and Greater MSP staff discussed data disaggregation for equity analysis, sector-focused strategies (for example, medical device manufacturing and sustainable aviation fuel supply chains), and potential updates to the dashboard in 2026. Greater MSP said the dashboard is built largely on publicly available federal data and that the project will revisit the peer-region set and other methodological details in a planned 2026 refresh.
Why it matters: The dashboard is intended to inform regional strategy by tracking long-term change and benchmarking the Twin Cities against other metro areas. Presenters said recent improvements on inclusion are encouraging but that slower growth, falling venture capital and reduced net migration of young adults pose policy questions for workforce, economic-development and innovation strategies.
