Agriculture is still a major part of the economy even though only a small percentage of the population, less than 1%, are employed in the farming industry.

Minnesota is the U.S.'s largest producer of sugar beets, sweet corn, and green peas for processing and farm-raised turkeys.

Although the pure ore is now depleted, taconite mining remains strong using processes developed locally to save the industry.

Southdale Center, the first fully enclosed and completely climate-controlled shopping mall in the United States opened on October 8, 1956, in the suburban city of Edina.

St. Jude Medical represents a growing biomedical industry spawned by university research, and Rochester is the headquarters of the world-famous Mayo Clinic.

Today, the most salient characteristic of the economy is its diversity; the relative outputs of its business sectors closely match the United States as a whole.

[19] William Norris, Seymour Cray, and others left Sperry in 1957 to form Control Data Corporation (CDC).

The Federal Reserve Bank of Minneapolis combined computing power with financial clout across its region from Montana to upper Michigan.

[22] An active high-technology sector is represented today by Alliant Techsystems, Ceridian, Cray, Digi International, Digital River, Geek Squad, Hutchinson Technology, Imation, IBM Rochester, Lawson Software, MacSoft, Medtronic, MTS Systems, St. Jude Medical, Stratasys, SPS Commerce, 3M, and more than 400 smaller software companies.

[24] The following table lists the public companies headquartered in Minnesota with 2010 revenues placing them in the 1000 largest U.S.

As of 2001, Minnesotans were using a total of 7.2 million US gallons (27,000 m3) of gasoline per day, and fuel use rises in the region by about 2% annually.

Flint Hills is currently planning a $100 million expansion to increase capacity at the plant to about 330,000 barrels per day (52,000 m3/d).

Like other Midwestern states that experience cold winters, Minnesota is heavily dependent on natural gas for home heating.

[29] The state does not charge sales tax on clothing, some services, or food items for home consumption.