Minnesota added 14,400 jobs in August, the largest monthly gain since July 2022, the Minnesota Department of Employment and Economic Development said Thursday. The state’s unemployment rate increased to 3.3% and the labor force was flat over the month, the DEED news release said.

“This is a great month for Minnesota’s jobs market,” said DEED Commissioner Matt Varilek in the release. “We added the most jobs in a single month in two years, reflecting employers’ ongoing appetite to hire more workers. Our responsibility is to help them do that.”

The Bureau of Labor Statistics also revised last month’s employment figures for Minnesota. Rather than a loss of 1,100 jobs, as initially reported, the state gained 2,500 payroll jobs from June to July, DEED said. This means Minnesota has added jobs nine out of the last 12 months.

The labor force participation rate was 67.7%; this measures the portion of the population that is working or actively seeking work, and is used to calculate the headline unemployment rate.

Eight of 11 employment sectors in Minnesota gained jobs, led by Leisure & Hospitality, up 4,300 jobs; Education & Health Services, 4,200 jobs, and Professional & Business Services, up 3,900.

DEED also reported Thursday that wages in Minnesota grew twice as fast as inflation over the month. The average private sector hourly wage was $37.74 in August, an increase of 5.9% over the year. The Consumer Price Index, a common measure of inflation, rose 2.5% over that time.

By ethnicity, Black unemployment was 5.2%, Hispanic, 3.7%; white, 2.8%; Asian, 1.8% and Native American, 8.3%.

— Pioneer Press

U.S. home sales continue to slow

Sales of previously occupied U.S. homes fell in August to the slowest annual pace in nearly a year even as mortgage rates eased and the supply of properties on the market continued to rise.

Existing home sales fell 2.5% last month, from July, to a seasonally adjusted annual rate of 3.86 million, the National Association of Realtors said Thursday.

Sales fell 4.2% compared with August last year. The latest home sales were short of the 3.9 million pace economists were expecting, according to FactSet.

Home prices increased on an annual basis for the 14th consecutive month. The national median sales price rose 3.1% from a year earlier to $416,700. That’s the highest median price for the month of August on records going back to 1999.

Axel Springer to break up in $15B deal

Axel Springer, the owner of Politico, Business Insider and a portfolio of German newspapers, has struck a deal that will anoint its CEO, Mathias Döpfner, as the undisputed magnate of a transcontinental media empire.

The deal announced Thursday will split Axel Springer into two separate organizations. Döpfner and Friede Springer, the widow of the company’s founder, will assume full control of the media properties. And Axel Springer’s biggest outside investors, private equity firm KKR and CPP Investments, will take control of the company’s lucrative classified advertising business.

The move will cement Döpfner and Springer’s unilateral oversight of the company’s publishing business, giving them additional latitude to expand their media holdings.

The deal values all of Axel Springer at roughly $15 billion, with the company’s publishing assets worth about $4 billion, according to a person familiar with the negotiations who spoke on condition of anonymity to discuss confidential financial information.

Mortgage rates inch down to near 6%

The average rate on a 30-year mortgage in the U.S. edged closer to 6% this week to its lowest level since early February 2023.

The rate fell to 6.09% from 6.20% last week, mortgage buyer Freddie Mac said Thursday. A year ago, the rate averaged 7.19%.

The last time the average rate was this low was on February 2, 2023.

Borrowing costs on 15-year fixed-rate mortgages, popular with homeowners seeking to refinance their home loan to a lower rate, also eased this week. The average rate fell to 5.15% from 5.27% last week. A year ago, it averaged 6.54%, Freddie Mac said.

— From news services