Evan Ramstad
Star Tribune
(TNS)

Cirrus Aircraft is the largest manufacturer in Duluth and one of the highest-paying and dynamic employers in a part of Minnesota that has seen hundreds of job cuts in the past two years.

It needs to work harder than you might think, though, to find new workers.

I walked into “Walk-In Wednesday” at Cirrus Aircraft’s new talent center one recent week to find out why. And the first things I saw were two airplanes and a group of workers rolling up parachutes.

Cirrus doesn’t make the world’s biggest or fastest airplanes, but it produces more planes than any other company. Every week, about 15 piston-engine aircraft and two or three jets roll off production lines in Duluth and are flown to Tennessee, where customers pick them up.

The Chinese-owned company, with revenue of $1.2 billion last year, has passed Cessna as the top seller of general aviation planes.

And those parachutes are a big reason why.

The company equips all of its planes with them — and it’s the only major aircraft manufacturer to do so. If a plane loses power and needs to make a crash landing, the pilot can deploy the chute to bring the plane down.

“We’ve saved countless lives with that alone,” said Tim Sheridan, the company’s senior vice president for human resources.

About four years ago, Cirrus added another industry-leading safety feature: Safe Return, a system designed by Garmin. If a pilot becomes incapacitated in a Cirrus plane, a passenger with no piloting experience can push a button and the plane will automatically send an emergency signal to air traffic controllers, then identify the nearest safe airport — and land on its own.

Jay Leno even made a video about that.

Cirrus has an order backlog that stretches out more than a year. But despite that growth and its high profile in Duluth, it still struggles a bit to find workers.

“I’m going on four years now,” said Sheridan, who previously hired workers at Harley-Davidson and Miller Brewing in Milwaukee. ”I’m still surprised at the number of people who don’t know what Cirrus is and what we do.”

Cirrus’ situation reflects the labor shortage that has shadowed Minnesota’s economy in the 2020s. The state was slower than most to recover from the workforce decline the country experienced during COVID-19 in 2020 and 2021.

Minnesota’s workforce finally got back above pre-pandemic size in 2024 and climbed steadily until last November — when it turned down again. The fact that the Trump administration’s crackdown on undocumented immigrants in Minnesota began last November cannot be coincidental. But Minnesota’s workforce continued to shrink all year and, as of July, was only about 3,000 people above its pre-pandemic level.

So there’s not as many available workers out there as it might seem. Meanwhile, Cirrus continues to grow. It is about to start production on a new plane aimed at flight training schools, and the company needs more people on the assembly line.

“We’ll continue to be hungry for people for the foreseeable future, which is part of the reason we built the training center,” Sheridan said.

The company remodeled a former motorcycle dealership, located at a highly visible spot along U.S. Hwy. 53 that goes to the Iron Range, into a showroom to sell itself as a place to work.

The building is also used to train workers. Those two airplanes parked at the front door aren’t just for show: They are regularly taken apart and put back together by new hires during orientation and training.

To make the hiring process even more accessible, the company created Walk-In Wednesday at the center. Hiring managers from several departments spend their afternoon there so they can be available to interview anyone who walks through the door. When I arrived unannounced, three people were filling out applications on computers. Lillian Edwards, a human resources manager, asked me if I’d like to apply.

Tempting.

Instead, Ben Martin, a training director, took me on a tour of the building. We walked through rooms with engines and cockpit mockups, complete with the controls a pilot uses in flight. Even the noise aboard a plane can be simulated.

The various workstations in Cirrus’ nearby factory buildings have been duplicated in the training center. “So when they get to the production floor, it looks like what they are used to seeing,” Martin said.

Many people think airplane manufacturing may be too difficult for them, so they don’t even try.

Sheridan said he hears it all the time, even when he’s just having casual interactions around the Duluth area and people find out what he does for Cirrus. He challenges the idea whenever he can, like a couple of weeks ago when a man working for a local contractor walked in.

“Like many people, his initial thinking was, I can’t build airplanes,” Sheridan said. “No, I told him, you definitely can build a component we’ll train you on. And then, you will continue to learn all the different components and parts.”

Walk-In Wednesday is just the start of the hiring process. After an initial interview, a promising applicant is invited back for tests of technical skills and communication.

“If you’ve got the aptitude, the right attitude, as well as the aspiration to come in and make a career out of something, this is the place to go,” Sheridan said. “Because we will invest in people from Day One if they’ve got those three things coming in the door.”

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