Tourists returning to Minnesota resorts but workers are not

Associated Press

MINNEAPOLIS – With COVID-19 limits fading away, tourists are returning to Minnesota resorts, many of them from neighboring states. A lot of the workers are not coming back.

Ben Wogsland, a spokesman for Hospitality Minnesota, the trade association for the state’s hotels, restaurants, resorts and campgrounds, says the worker shortage has been building for more than a year.

The industry is down about 50,000 workers from its normal summer level of 280,000 to 290,000 workers.

The Star Tribune reports that many of them found other jobs during the first COVID shutdown in March and April last year, and others left when a second hospitality shutdown was ordered later in the year.