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Human Capital and a Trained Workforce: Develop human capital and a skilled, diverse, and trained workforce to implement economic development strategy and increase productivity, growth and innovation.

A knowledge-based economy, heightened competition in globalized markets, and the quickening pace of change make continual innovation, commercialization and business creation imperative for economic success. It is necessary to promote a city in which residents from all backgrounds have access and opportunity to gain and retain well-paying employment that allows them to grow as individuals; a city where employers find the skilled workforce they need to thrive and grow; and a city where ethnic diversity in all fields of entrepreneurship is supported. Employment and training practices as well as opportunities for entrepreneurship will need to adapt to demographic and technological changes to promote growth for all segments of the city’s population and to create a sustainable entrepreneurial environment.


The City will seek to accomplish the following action steps to develop human capital and a skilled, diverse, and trained workforce to implement economic development strategy and increase productivity, growth and innovation.

  1. Design workforce development programs and create partnerships that work to eliminate race-based employment disparities.
  2. Explore and implement strategies to increase access and participation in employment training programs.
  3. Invest in high-quality community-based, culturally appropriate, and accessible employment programs and strategies that serve to remove barriers to holding a living-wage job and achieving economic self-sufficiency.
  4. Focus resources and efforts on building and maintaining a skilled and employable workforce through education, placement, and training.
  5. Focus resources and efforts on connecting residents to new job creation and income-generation activities in ways that promote self-reliance and create an agile workforce.
  6. Invest in Minneapolis youth through high-quality paid employment programs that expose teens and youth to work, education, entrepreneurship, and career pathways.
  7. Invest in Minneapolis adults through high-quality apprenticeships and career pathways.
  8. Explore partnerships and opportunities to create apprenticeship and training programs for trade professions with employers throughout the city.
  9. Invest in human capital development in advanced manufacturing and in roles unlikely to be replaced by robotics, automation or other disruptive technologies and systems that can lead to professional licensure and occupational certification.
  10. Promote healthy, safe, just, and equitable workplaces with adequate protections for all workers.
  11. Promote ongoing training around cultural competency to help combat implicit bias in hiring and to support retention of diversity in the workforce.
  12. Support historic preservation and creative sector workers through training and skill building.
  13. Collect and use disaggregated workforce and demographic data to inform investments in employment and training programs.
  14. Remain vigilant about automation’s impact on the local economy with a prioritization of training workers of color and Indigenous workers for higher wage jobs in the new economy due to jobs lost to automated processes.
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