It's good to hear substantive outside perspective (especially when it validates belief in Minnesota exceptionalism), and regional economists at Wells Fargo in North Carolina have given us both.

They published a thoroughly bullish summary of the health of the Minnesota economy in their April outlook:

That's the view from Charlotte, N.C., where Wachovia used to be headquartered and a lot of economists in what's now Wells Fargo are stationed. Those include Mark Vitner, Michael Wolf and Alex Moehring, the economists who write the Minnesota outlook.

(Workers pour concrete at aparking ramp between the under- construction
Wells Fargo towers and the new Vikings stadium in Minneapolis, early March 2015.)

The authors caution that Minnesota must attract more population (including by "in-migration"), and they point out the pain of the job cuts at Target and on the Iron Range. But they say that most everything else about the state's economy is healthy. It's growing, well-positioned and likely to continue to outperform national averages:

That's a pretty hearty endorsement. I'll add that estimated Latino unemployment in Minnesota fell 3 percentage points in a year, to 5.1 percent. That's a huge drop and I have no idea what the dynamics are there. Ideas?

Black Minnesotans, however, are not faring well in the job market. Black worker unemployment is estimated at 12.4 percent. That's worse than a year ago and now about 2 percentage points higher than the national average.

And because white unemployment in Minnesota is so low -- 3.1 percent in March -- the disparity between Minnesota's 330,000 blacks and its 4,700,000 whites is greater than the disparity in most states in the nation.