During a wide-ranging presentation on demographic trends to the St. Paul City Council this week, state demographer Susan Brower laid out harrowing statistics on Minnesota’s worker shortage and the rapidly aging population.

Immigration from abroad and other states accounts for most of the state population growth, and much of that net migration is happening in Minneapolis and St. Paul proper, Brower said Wednesday.

Minnesota’s capital city continues to be a magnet for millennials, who in other states are showing signs of tiring of urban living and heading to the suburbs to have children.

Minneapolis and St. Paul, however, are still leading growth trends, and it’s unclear if and when that will soften, Brower said.

The capital city is now a majority-minority city. Roughly 13 percent of the state’s 1 million residents of color — or more than 1 in 10 Minnesotans of color — now live in St. Paul.

Brower noted that the percentage of residents who are people of color in St. Paul reached 50.2 percent in 2017, for a total count of 154,000 people of color that year. About 40 percent of the Minneapolis population is people of color, or roughly 170,000 people in 2017.

Still, imagine St. Paul before Interstate 94 and other major thoroughfares removed homes by the hundreds.

St. Paul, which is home to 313,000 residents this year by Metropolitan Council estimates, is still 400 people short of its all-time high population reached in 1960, which was 313,411 residents.

The U.S. Census Bureau will update its figures after the 2020 census is taken. Brower noted, however, that many of the communities most likely to be undercounted in an official census live in St. Paul.

Brower also noted that Minnesota — like the nation — is continuing to gray, a trend that will only intensify in coming years.

As of 2020, for the first time in the state’s history, more residents will be over age 65 than school-age. That trend is the new normal. Nationally, the youngest baby boomers will turn 65 around 2030, and they’ll turn 80 around 2045.

State and national populations will tilt toward seniors for a long time to come “unless we see a considerable change in our migration patterns,” she said. Related Articles Otto Bremer Trust case returns to court on Wednesday

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That has huge implications for employers, who are already scrambling to find qualified talent.

Many of the new job openings in coming years, however, will be in relatively low-wage health care/social assistance, retail, or food/hospitality positions, in that order, Brower predicted.

A full copy of Brower’s presentation is available online.