Times of uncertainty breed indecision, and Minnesota manufacturers are operating in a highly unpredictable era. Today’s manufacturers must grapple with varied challenges, from the rollercoaster of tariff policy to the impact of new state-mandated benefits as well as the effects of artificial intelligence. And many say they are making decisions in a vacuum.
A key focus of the 2025 State of Manufacturing® (SOM) survey will be to gauge how executives are navigating these unsettled times. Now in its 17th year, the Enterprise Minnesota annual survey gives both a window into how manufacturers feel about their current prospects and a long-range view of industry trends.
Enterprise Minnesota leaders are especially eager to learn manufacturers’ responses to questions about this new environment.
The poll will pair these inquiries with benchmark questions that provide a snapshot of manufacturers’ outlook on Minnesota’s business climate and their ability to operate in current conditions — and in the coming years ahead. These benchmarks cover a spectrum of topics that commonly affect manufacturers, such as economic confidence; barriers to success like workforce challenges or health care costs; and their projected growth, profitability, and capital expenditures.
“Seeing the trends over time helps us understand the flavor of the overall industry,” says Bob Kill, president and CEO of Enterprise Minnesota. “There are a lot of concerns right now, and there has been more uncertainty overall since COVID. This year, I think we’re going to see supply chain issues and tariffs popping up and uncertainty around costs. And I think we will see some residual reactions from the new paid family and medical leave and earned sick and safe time laws in Minnesota. Last year we saw a very negative reaction to those.”
The full picture
Since its inception in 2008, the SOM has produced objective data that manufacturers, business leaders, and policymakers use to gain understanding of a vital industry in Minnesota. A critical aspect of the survey and manufacturers’ steady participation has been SOM’s objectivity and credibility. It stems from the polling firm, Meeting Street Insights, which has been involved from day one. Founded by pollster Rob Autry, the firm capitalizes on Autry’s sterling reputation and 25-year career in political and business polling. He has conducted more than 8,000 polls and focus groups during his career, including polling for four presidents and six presidential campaigns.
Each fall, the SOM kicks off when more than 500 executives of small- and medium-sized manufacturers statewide respond to survey questions. To provide a comprehensive picture, Meeting Street Insights also conducts an oversampling of 50 executives in each of the state’s six McKnight Initiative Foundation regions. The team breaks down all of this data into several categories to deepen understanding, such as by number of employees, revenue, and region.
Next, Enterprise Minnesota conducts focus groups with manufacturing executives across Minnesota. These gatherings dig deeper into the questions, gathering more context and additional insights into manufacturers’ experiences during the past year, and their predictions for doing business in 2026.
To Autry, the SOM stands out for its longevity. There really isn’t another regional survey that has been polling small and medium manufacturers as long Enterprise Minnesota’s. That tenure provides 16 years of trend data and counting, offering a long view of numerous issues. “We can compare what we’re seeing now with other points of time, and that’s fascinating and unique,” Autry says. “This survey is different because it is a very specialized audience who’s specific to the state of Minnesota. We can dig deeper in surveys and broadly understand the manufacturing industry.”
Autry is eager to see if manufacturers’ outlook has improved. In 2024, manufacturers hit peak pessimism about the state’s business climate. A record-high 56% of respondents thought that the climate was worse, a 50% increase over the previous year and the highest since the Great Recession. That was startling, considering that Minnesota manufacturers are some of the most optimistic people Autry has ever polled.
“Last year, there were heightened concerns about recession, inflationary fears, and declining confidence in their own companies,” he says. “The question is, are we going to continue this trend of record-high pessimism? We want to get a sense of whether those broader trends are continuing in this year’s survey.”
Other takeaways from the 2024 survey included fears about economic conditions. About 41% of respondents believed a recession was looming, a high mark that was last hit during the 2008 Great Recession and in 2022 after the pandemic. The same percentage of manufacturers (41%) braced for declines in gross revenue and profitability, an increase from 26% in 2023.
This year, the SOM will delve into several new topics, inquiring about artificial intelligence and automation: To what degree are manufacturers turning to these tools? What potential opportunities and obstacles do they anticipate? The survey also aims to assess what impact the whipsaw news about tariffs is having on manufacturers.
“This is new territory for us. We want to understand how confident manufacturers are in navigating the current tariff and trade environment,” Autry says.
“We’re really interested in what manufacturers are doing or considering doing to tackle this concern. Are they pausing new hiring or reducing their workforce or increasing sourcing from suppliers in the United States?”
Uniting the industry
The goals of the SOM have always been to inform lawmakers, business leaders, high school and technical school educators, and providers of professional services about the biggest issues impacting this vital industry. And naturally, manufacturers themselves are a significant audience, says Lynn Shelton, vice president of marketing and organizational development at Enterprise Minnesota. Survey results give manufacturers assurance that they are not alone in facing challenges, whether they arise from federal, state, or local policies, or macro-economic conditions.
The SOM often serves as an early warning system for decision-makers. It unearths pressures facing small and medium manufacturers that just don’t show up in big-picture data. Shelton points to the worker shortage, a trend that the survey detected long before it was a much-discussed concern hitting every corner of the state.
“The SOM brings together a variety of private-public partnerships in support of manufacturing companies in Minnesota and their employees,” Shelton says. “We have accomplished that throughout the years by building relationships, whether that’s with other industries that support manufacturers like legal and accounting and banking, or with educators who want to feed manufacturers with future employees.”
During SOM rollout events held in November and December, stakeholders from all of these sectors come together to learn the obstacles and outlooks for Minnesota’s manufacturing industry. About 1,200 people attend annually to gather insight, expand their networks, and learn about shared challenges affecting small and medium manufacturers, Kill says.
“The State of Manufacturing makes manufacturers feel valued as great employers. It brings them together as a community who makes products that are important not only in the state but throughout the world,” Shelton says. “The survey recognizes that there are so many brethren who are their friends and potential future suppliers and maybe customers. They get to meet each other and feel part of a larger effort.”
In addition to providing essential data and a multi-year perspective on issues facing manufacturers, the SOM supports the industry in other ways, Kill says. “It’s a really engaging service that gets a lot of people thinking more deeply about the value of manufacturing in their community,” he adds. “It brings a lot of visibility to people who don’t understand the value of manufacturing as well as they could, and it allows manufacturers to do some comparative analysis of what others are doing.”
Kill observes that the survey regularly sheds light on manufacturers’ best practices, helping inform other executives’ decision-making. For example, as leaders learn that ISO certification is becoming an engrained part of other manufacturers’ operations, they often seek to explore that opportunity for their own companies. Or they might gain insight into how similarly sized manufacturers handle recruiting, hiring, and retaining employees, and then experiment with those tactics. It’s all in service of making the Minnesota manufacturing industry as strong as possible.
The more manufacturers understand about their industry, the better they can operate. “I know many manufacturers who really drive their businesses by trying to understand what’s going on around them. Then they understand what they can control and what they can’t control, and what the trends are,” Kill says. “By incorporating long-term trends and current events in the SOM, we’re trying to bring manufacturers information that helps them make decisions in this current economic climate.”
Return to the Fall 2025 issue of Enterprise Minnesota® magazine.
