The Minnesota Department of Employment and Economic Development announced today that Minnesota ranked fifth among states in employee perceptions of job creation at their workplaces, according to a new study released by the Gallup organization.

"The Gallup Job Creation Index results are another positive indication of a strong economy in Minnesota," said Katie Clark Sieben, commissioner of the Minnesota Department of Employment and Economic Development (DEED). "High scores in the index strongly correlate with standard of living and confidence in the economy rankings."

Gallup's Job Creation Index is a measure of net hiring, determined by asking full- and part-time U.S. workers, aged 18 and older, whether their employer is hiring new people and expanding the size of its workforce, not changing the size of its workforce, or letting people go and reducing the size of its workforce.

This is only the second year Minnesota has ranked in the top tier of states on the annual Job Creation Index, with 28 points. Minnesota came in behind North Dakota (40 points), the District of Columbia and South Dakota (30 points each), and Nebraska and Delaware (29 points each). Other states finishing in the top tier of the Gallup Job Creation Index were Texas (27 points), Michigan and Iowa (25 points each), and Arizona, Wisconsin and Hawaii (23 points each). Minnesota, which has one of the lowest unemployment rates in the country at 4.6 percent, created nearly 46,000 jobs in the past year. A separate study by the Bureau of Economic Analysis last year ranked Minnesota fifth in growth of gross domestic product in 2012. Go here to see more details about the study.

The Gallup findings reflect business attitudes and optimism about the economy and job growth. Last month, DEED released findings of a survey done with the Federal Reserve Bank that showed 91 percent of Minnesota manufacturers responding expect production and employment levels to increase or stay the same in 2014. The full report can be found here.

Since Governor Dayton took office in 2011, Minnesota has added over 122,000 new jobs - recovering all the jobs that were lost during the Great Recession. The Governor has taken action to strengthen our economy and create a stable environment for businesses to expand and create jobs. With a fair and balanced budget, new investments in education at every level to strengthen our skilled workforce, and targeted investments in economic development that will leverage billions of dollars in private investment, Governor Dayton has provided additional tools to accelerate our recovery and create economic opportunity for the middle class.