Building Equipment Contractors in Minnesota: Employment Trends by Gender

Contributed by Tim O'Neill, MN DEED


Recent workforce blogs have focused on total employment within Electrical Contractors and the larger Building Equipment Contractors industry sectors in Minnesota. Data from the US Census Bureau’s Quarterly Workforce Indicators (QWI) tool allows one to analyze employment by age, gender, educational attainment, and race and ethnicity. 

This time around, we’ll take a quick look at Building Equipment Contractors employment in Minnesota by gender.

As of annual 2021, there were approximately 41,077 Building Equipment Contractors jobs in the State of Minnesota. Of these total jobs, 35,566 (86.6%) were held by males and 5,510 (13.4%) were held by females. A slightly higher share of total Construction jobs were held by female workers (15.1%). For reference, 50.6% of total jobs across all industries were held by female workers (Figure 1):

     

While female workers make up smaller shares of Construction jobs and Building Equipment Contractors jobs in Minnesota, recent trends do show more and more female workers entering these industries. For example, between 2011 and 2021, Building Equipment Contactors’ employment in Minnesota expanded by 49.7% (+13,631 jobs). Female-held jobs in this industry expanded by 63.7% during this time (+2,144 jobs). More recently, between 2016 and 2021, Building Equipment Contractors’ employment in Minnesota expanded by 18.4% (+6,372 jobs). Female-held jobs in this industry expanded by 30.9% during this time (+1,301 jobs). Where women in this industry accounted for 15.7% of total job growth over the last ten years, they accounted for 20.4% of total job growth over the last five years. This only accelerated over the last year of available data. Between 2020 and 2021, women accounted for 23.2% of total job growth in Building Equipment Contractors. 

Figure 2 reveals that the female share of employment in Building Equipment Contractors has accelerated since 2015:




Source: Quarterly Workforce Indicators.