The largest employers in Minneapolis: the city's list, downtown's top 15 and what changed

This page is for job seekers, economic developers, reporters and B2B sellers who want to know who employs the most people in Minneapolis itself. It uses the two lists published in the city: the City of Minneapolis's principal employers schedule and the Minneapolis Downtown Council's top downtown employers. For Minnesota as a whole, where Mayo Clinic tops the list, see the largest employers in Minnesota.

Minneapolis's largest employers: the city's list

Every year the City of Minneapolis publishes a principal employers schedule in its Annual Comprehensive Financial Report. The 2025 report (Schedule 15) compares the top ten with 2016:

The table keeps the city's own ranks. The schedule's notes say the university's count comes from its human resources office, Allina's from its public relations department, and the downtown counts from the Minneapolis Downtown Council, rounded to the nearest 100; the 2016 figures come from the city's 2016 annual report. UPS, ninth in 2016 with 3,500, is no longer in the top ten.

How to read it

Three cautions before you quote the list:

1. The counts aren't on one basis. The university's 25,235 covers all its Twin Cities campuses, including St. Paul, while most company figures count only downtown Minneapolis offices. A company with big suburban campuses, such as UnitedHealth Group in Eden Prairie, doesn't appear at all.
2. The ranks don't follow the counts. Hennepin County is ranked fifth with 3,672, below Wells Fargo, U.S. Bancorp and Ameriprise in headcount, and the city is ranked ninth with fewer people than tenth-ranked Xcel Energy. The table above shows the schedule as published.
3. The share column changed definition. The 2025 column is labeled a percentage of total metro employment (21.8% for the ten), while the 2016 column was a share of total city employment (26.0%), so the two percentages can't be compared.

Downtown Minneapolis's top 15 employers

The Minneapolis Downtown Council, the downtown business association, publishes a fuller downtown ranking in its annual State of Downtown report. Its 2025 report, covering 2024:

Together the 15 had 48,005 downtown employees. The Downtown Council's figures for 2024 are higher than the city's 2025 figures for several of the same employers (Target 7,100 against 5,800; Hennepin County 6,176 against 3,672), so check which year a number you're quoting refers to. The Council's list adds names the city's top ten leaves out, such as SPS Commerce, RBC Wealth Management, Thrivent Financial and Deloitte.

What changed since 2016

On the city's own comparison, the downtown corporate employers shrank while the university grew. Target's downtown count fell 29% (8,200 to 5,800), Wells Fargo's 22%, Ameriprise's 18% and Hennepin County's 44%, while the University of Minnesota's rose 26% to 25,235. Hennepin Healthcare was roughly flat. The total for the top ten fell 17%, from 84,300 to 69,873. Part of that is how the counts were taken, but every company on the list reports fewer downtown employees than in 2016.

Large employers across the metro

The federal data shows where the other large workplaces are. In the Census Bureau's 2023 County Business Patterns, the 15-county metro had 142 business establishments with 1,000 or more employees and 181 with 500 to 999:

Hennepin County, which includes Minneapolis and suburbs such as Eden Prairie, Bloomington and Minnetonka, has 59% of the metro's largest establishments. CBP doesn't publish these two counts for the smaller counties, and it covers private establishments only. Government adds a large layer: in the Bureau of Labor Statistics' Quarterly Census of Employment and Wages, Hennepin County averaged 919,062 covered jobs in 2025, of which 825,100 were private (89.8%), 55,791 local government, 25,388 state government and 12,784 federal.

For the companies with the most revenue, rather than the most local staff, see the largest companies in Minneapolis.

Selling to Minneapolis's largest employers

The list mixes four kinds of buyers, and each buys differently:

Illustrative example. The seller and its figures are fictional; the employer figures are from the Downtown Council's list.

Skyway Commute (skywaycommute.example) runs pre-tax transit and parking benefit programs and wants the companies on the downtown top 15.

• Leaving out the government employers, Hennepin Healthcare and the Federal Reserve Bank, the list has 11 non-government employers with 30,854 downtown employees.
• If a third of those employees enroll at a $6 per participant monthly fee, that's about 10,280 participants and $740,000 a year in fees across the 11.
• It needs only two or three of the larger employers to build the business, so it targets the benefits leaders at Target, Wells Fargo, U.S. Bank and Ameriprise first, and times outreach to spring, before open enrollment for the next year is set.

Bebop can find the benefits and workplace leaders at each employer and draft outreach that reflects how many people each has downtown.

Subject: Commuting costs for [Company]'s [number] downtown staff

Hi [first name],

With [number] people working downtown, transit passes and ramp parking are a real cost for [Company]'s staff, and a pre-tax program lowers it for them and for you.

We run transit and parking benefits for downtown Minneapolis employers, with enrollment handled through your existing benefits portal. Could I send a one-page estimate of the payroll tax savings for a workforce your size before next year's open enrollment?

[Your name], Skyway Commute

Next step: see how large organizations split their buying in enterprise account research.