The only thing that is constant is change. I have a lot of connections and relatives in rural Minnesota so I get a composite view.
In several mid-sized cities, the report I'm getting is that business is booming. Interest rates are relatively low and everything from construction, to light industry, to services, etc are going gangbusters.
The biggest problem is the desperate shortage of skilled workers. And basically, jobs are increasingly demanding a higher and higher skill level and more advanced training.
Even retail is on hard times as far as getting employees. I have connections out west in Alexandria and I know a manager at one of the big chain retailers out there who has told his staff do not, under any circumstances, allow a qualified applicant to leave without the manager talking to them and deciding whether or not to make an on the spot offer. The situation is so desperate that they have lost out on multiple people because they walked across the parking lot to the OTHER big box store and got hired on the spot.
An out of work mechanic is seen about as often as a live dinosaur. The situation is desperate for almost any kind of work that involves skill and formal training. Get your kids to go to vocational school, college, or military!
But on the other hand, things are tough on the farms. My last farming uncle retired this year after he and his wife did their projections and saw that they would run at about a $200,000 loss this year assuming grain prices stay roughly the same. The sold everything off and rented out the land, they are only 63 years old but they were not keen to take on multiple years of running in the red or at break even because of low grain prices. There is NOT much optimism that I hear of for grain prices going up much (if any!) in the next 2-4 years. If fuel or input prices take a jump for some reason, a lot of farms are in trouble.
The cattle guys are in a little better shape. I don't follow the market closely, but I believe prices have edged up in recent months. The 2 cattle farmers I know had sold down heavily when prices were high and they had really run back their herds such that their breeding stock was aging and they needed to hold back replacements in a big way. Spring calving weather was good, but in MN they are struggling with getting forage crops in due to wet weather.
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Today's Featured Article - A Belt Pulley? Really Doing Something? - by Chris Pratt. Belt Pulleys! Most of us conjure up a picture of a massive thresher with a wide belt lazily arching to a tractor 35 feet away throwing a cloud of dust, straw and grain, and while nostalgic, not too practical a method of using our tractors. While this may have been the bread and butter of the belt work in the past (since this is what made the money on many farms), the smaller tasks may have been and still can be its real claim to fame. The thresher would bring in the harvest (and income) once a y
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