How the Twin Cities Are Closing Their Big Workforce Diversity Gap

The Twin Cities of Minneapolis and St. Paul are seen as the economic success stories of the Midwest, but only a subsection of their residents gets a piece of the pie. In a new essay for the Brookings Institution, Jennifer Bradley, founding director of the Center on Urban Innovation at the Aspen Institute, spotlights that part of the Twin Cities workforce being left behind: low-income people of color. Bradley also highlights initiatives that are trying to change the situation by equipping these residents with the tools to get them up to speed.

As a way of introducing the problems and potential solutions, Bradley's essay first shows how the Minneapolis-St.Paul workforce is changing. While the Twin Cities are nowhere near as diverse as cities like New York, Chicago, or Los Angeles, they're getting there. Minnesota, as a whole, is a destination to immigrants from all over the world. Bradley writes: