A new report by North Star Policy Action is confirming what everyone already knew: People are paying more to live under the Trump Administration. For Minnesotans, it’s $4.6 billion more in 2025, the first year of Trump’s return to the presidential office, compared to the previous year.
With the midterm elections less than five months away, many voters are looking at their bank accounts as they consider who they’ll vote for. The majority of Minnesotans say affordability is the number one-concern when it comes to elected officials’ priorities.
Jake Schwitzer, executive director at NSPA, pointed out that President Donald Trump campaigned on lowering prices for everyday items, “so the change from 2024 to 2025 shows that not only has President Trump failed to anything about affordability issues or addressing the cost of living for Minnesotans, the problem is the worst it’s ever been.”
Cost of living increased by 6.1%
NSPA analyzed data put out by the Minnesota Department of Employment and Economic Development (DEED) to get the numbers used in the new report. Schwitzer says the jump to a 6.1% increase in cost of living “is nearly three times the historical average of the previous decade.” Data shows that from 2014 to 2024, the average annual increase was only 2.3%.
Schwitzer also noted that because this data focused on the last year, it didn’t include one of the biggest drivers of inflation: the Iran war. “This failed war in Iran drove up gas prices by 48% for Minnesotans.”
Biggest contributing factors
Diving more into the DEED data, Schwitzer said the leading causes of increased prices for Minnesotans include tariffs “driving up the costs of every good, groceries, consumer goods,” and healthcare cuts.
He said the historic cuts to healthcare approved by Trump’s One Big Beautiful Bill (OBBB) were the largest reason for the inflation, rising 25.7% in 2025. Because of the cuts to Medicaid and the elimination of American Care Act (ACA) tax subsidies, fewer people can afford to pay their healthcare insurance premiums. In Minnesota, the uninsured rate jumped from 3.8% in 2023 to 5.8% in 2025, the highest percentage since 2017.
Schwitzer says 116,000 people have lost coverage, which affects everyone, including those who still have coverage. “Every additional uninsured Minnesotan drives up the cost…Your costs go up because uninsured people still have healthcare needs…and if they don’t have the funds to pay for that, and they’re not insured, those costs are spread out through the system.”
Additionally, “the worst is yet to come, “ he said. There are more cuts to Medicaid coming October 1, 2026, which will leave many more people—including as many as 180,000 Minnesotans—ineligible for coverage,.
County-level breakdown
Moving past the state-level changes, Schwitzer said every single county has been negatively impacted. NSPA reports that 70 of the state’s 87 counties saw a jump in their 2025 cost of living that was larger than their own historical average. But, there are four counties that are hurting the worst: Dodge (11.5%), Olmsted (11.5%), Wilkin (9.9%), and Cook (9.3%).
These four counties—aside from Olmsted, which includes Rochester—are all rural Greater Minnesota areas. “The cost increases don’t follow any sort of logic, they’re spread out. The Arrowhead region in far western Minnesota was pretty hard hit, stretches of southern Minnesota, certainly the metro area, and the suburbs,” he explained.
Using NSPA’s Minnesota Affordability Tracker, a “first-of-its-kind interactive data dashboard,” Schwitzer said Minnesotans can see how each county has seen their cost of living increase. “We’ve also got graphs breaking down historical changes in the cost of living versus household earning,” he said, because it’s not just increases in price that are in play.
Income isn’t enough to weather the inflation
Schwitzer said the other side of the affordability equation is income. “If your wages have gone up $100 in a year, but costs have gone up by $1,000 in a year, you’re losing money even though you’re making more money.” He said the tracker shows how each county has lost purchasing power due to income being unable to keep up with the inflation of costs. In the last year, Minnesota’s median wage increased by 3.8%, but when pitted against the 6.1% increase in the cost of living, it clearly isn’t enough. Schwitzer said this results in a loss of about “$1,410 in purchasing power in 2025 as a result of these cost increases.”
This doesn’t mean that Minnesota isn’t making money though. Schwitzer pointed out that “CEOs and folks relying on corporate profits are doing great.” The Economic Policy Institute reports that CEO pay has gone from 33 times the average worker salary in 1979, to 280 times the average worker salary in 2025. “The economy is producing, money is being made, but working people, working Minnesotans, just aren’t seeing the results,” Schwitzer said.
Tracking the 2026 data
When it comes to what to expect of the rest of 2026, the second year of the Trump presidency 2.0, Schwitzer goes back to the Iran war. The Minnesota Affordability Tracker has a tab tracking the price of gas currently in each county as prices have risen significantly.
Schwitzer said NSPA will be updating the tracker next year with the newest data, to keep Minnesotans informed about the changes in their cost of living.
