(The Center Square) – When it comes to employment, Minnesota is best in the nation, according to a new report from TOP Data.
The market research firm ranked states across seven key dimensions for its “Happiest States in the US” report: employment, leisure activities, mental health, personal finance, personal relationships, physical health and social policies.
Minnesota’s victory in the employment dimension was based on the following factors: quit rate, layoffs and discharges rate, average working hours per week, portion of people who commute more than 30 minutes per workday, unemployment rate, state productivity rate, working conditions and legislated paid leave.
The state has the sixth lowest quit rate and the lowest unemployment rate, the report said. It has the eighth best working conditions and the 12th best working hours. Working conditions were assessed by the number of fatal occupational injuries per capita over three years. Legislated paid leave measured whether the state legislated paid leave for full-time employees. Higher rankings in working hours reflect lower mean typical numbers of working hours per month over the past year for workers aged 16 to 64 years in each state, a TOP Data spokesperson told The Center Square said Wednesday.
Still, the state’s commute time is 27th best, and its state productivity, or the efficiency at which labor hours are used to produce goods and services – is 22nd best, the report said. The Bureau of Labor Statistics provided the data for state productivity, the TOP Data spokesperson said.
The North Star State placed ninth for personal finance. It has the third highest rate of people who own a residential property. Minnesota has the highest median FICO credit score per capita in the country and the eighth lowest percentage of adults who reported a time in the past year that they couldn’t afford to see a doctor when they needed to see one, the report said.
