The over 90,000 African immigrant workers in Minnesota are primarily concentrated in the health care, education, manufacturing, transportation, professional services, and retail sectors. I used an economic impact model, IMPLAN, very popular for economic impact studies nationally and globally to estimate the economic impact of these workers on the goods and services and taxes paid in the Minnesotan economy.
The chart below shows that African immigrant workers help support $33 billion in economic output of goods and services, over 175,000 jobs and $4 billion in federal, state and local taxes – a very powerful engine of economic growth in Minnesota.
In 2015 in a community survey that reached a wide range of African immigrants we documented their consumer impact from big box retailers to mom and pop local stores.
Nationally African immigrants have an estimated $385 billion consumer market.
