STRATAHELM · COMMUNITY AI EXPOSURE & RESILIENCE INDEX

Clay County, Minnesota

CAERI National › Minnesota › Clay County · FIPS 27027 · caeri:27027
51.8
CAERI score (national basis)
50th–75th
National percentile band
#1337
Ranked of 3142 U.S. counties
#13
Ranked in Minnesota (of 87)
High
Confidence

Two comparisons, both shown. The national basis ranks Clay County against every scored U.S. county — its percentile band above is a relative national standing, not a condition. The in-state basis ranks it against Minnesota's other counties (rank and percentile only — bands aren't meaningful within a single state). A county can stand out in its own state while sitting mid-pack nationally. Neither is a forecast.

Pillar breakdown — national percentile ranks

P1 · Direct occupational exposure
86
P2 · Economic concentration
46
P3 · Adaptive capacity (inverted)
80
P4 · Regional buffer (inverted)
48
P5 · Fiscal sensitivity
22
Zone shading marks percentile quartiles; darker and warmer means more concerning. Capacity and buffer bars (inverted before aggregation) read mirrored — for those, a higher percentile is the safer pale end.

What this means for Clay County

Clay County scores 51.8 on the national CAERI basis — 1337th of 3,142 scored U.S. counties, placing it in the 50th–75th band nationally by percentile, with a high-confidence rating. Within Minnesota it ranks 13th of 87 counties (86th in-state percentile). The score summarizes how concentrated local employment is in AI-exposed occupations against the economy's measured capacity to adapt; these are relative-standing bands, not a projection of local job change.

Direct occupational exposure stands at the 86th national percentile. The largest concentrations of locally estimated employment in high-exposure occupations are office clerks, general, customer service representatives, secretaries and administrative assistants, except legal, medical, and executive. The share of exposed-industry jobs held by workers under 25 is 16% — well above the state median of 10%; research on AI-era payrolls finds early-career roles in exposed work are where hiring patterns shift first, so this share indicates how soon exposure could be felt, not how large it is.

The share of exposed-industry jobs held by workers 55 and over is 20% (well below the state median) — a higher share historically means slower workforce adjustment when industries restructure. Fiscal sensitivity ranks at the 47th state percentile. In Minnesota the transmission runs through the property-tax base — commercial-industrial property is taxed at higher classification rates than homesteads, so softness in commercial values shifts levy burden or squeezes capacity — and through state aid, 27% of general revenue here (above the state median): Local Government Aid is financed from the state general fund and moves with statewide economic conditions, not only local ones. Local-option sales taxes are a minimal share of revenue here, leaving property values and state aid as the channels that matter. Minnesota local governments levy no local income tax. All county occupation figures on this page are model-based ESTIMATES with the confidence rating shown above.

Largest locally-estimated employment in high-exposure occupations

Across all 213 high-exposure occupations (top quartile of ensemble exposure) with estimated local employment, Clay County has an estimated 5,517 jobs — 26.1% of county employment — carrying an estimated $367M annual wage bill in high-exposure work. The five largest:

OccupationEstimated local employment*Exposure (0–1)Median wage (area)
Office Clerks, General4560.44$49,060
Customer Service Representatives4020.42$40,900
Secretaries and Administrative Assistants, Except Legal, Medical, and Executive3310.50$47,060
Elementary School Teachers, Except Special Education2560.43$60,210
Bookkeeping, Accounting, and Auditing Clerks2330.51$50,570
*These are estimates, and cannot be anything else. No federal survey measures employment by occupation at county level — not for this county, and not for any county in the United States. Every figure in this table is therefore a model-based ESTIMATE built from published federal data, never a count of actual jobs. They are built to compare occupations and places rather than to be read as headcounts, and their accuracy differs by occupation group — our methodology §5.1 publishes the measured error, including the groups we estimate high and the groups we estimate low. Every county also carries the confidence rating shown above. Wage = area median.

Age structure of exposed-industry employment

Clay CountyMinnesota median
Share of exposed-industry jobs held by workers under 25 (entry rung) 15.7%9.8%
Share of exposed-industry jobs held by workers 55+ (adjustment friction) 20.1%28.3%

🔒 City-level detail for its cities and towns

The county number above averages over every community in it. City- and place-level exposure profiles, employer-mix detail, trend monitoring, and peer benchmarking are part of the CAERI subscription for local governments and regional organizations.

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Cite this page

Canonical identifier: caeri:27027 — this URL is permanent; if the address scheme ever changes, the old address will redirect. StrataHelm. (2026). Clay County, Minnesota — Community AI Exposure & Resilience Index (CAERI v1.0.0) [Data set]. Retrieved October 4, 2026, from https://stratahelm.com/counties/minnesota/clay/ “Clay County, Minnesota — CAERI.” StrataHelm, 2026, stratahelm.com/counties/minnesota/clay/. Accessed 4 October 2026. StrataHelm. “Clay County, Minnesota — Community AI Exposure and Resilience Index (v1.0.0).” 2026. https://stratahelm.com/counties/minnesota/clay/
Embed this county's score card — attribution to StrataHelm CAERI and the link back are part of the embedded page and cannot be stripped:<iframe src="https://stratahelm.com/counties/minnesota/clay/embed/" width="420" height="275" loading="lazy" title="CAERI — Clay County, MN"></iframe>

Machine-readable: this county's JSON · national dataset download and data dictionary on the methodology page.

Nearby and comparable counties

Fillmore County, MN (in state)Houston County, MN (in state)Washington County, MN (in state)Butler County, OH (similar score)Union County, NC (similar score)Washington County, GA (similar score)

Links point to the economically nearest counties (in-state, and similar national score). County-level geographic adjacency is not part of the public reference data, so proximity here is by rank, not by shared border.

Sources & provenance

LayerSources (vintage)
Employment & occupation structurecbp_mn_county_naics4: Census CBP 2023 API (NAICS2017 classification; PAYANN in $1,000s; noise infusion G/H/J bands, D = withheld -&gt; NaN); county_soc_estimates.meta.json; exposure_scores: 2026-10-02; matrix_staffing_patterns: 2024-34 National Employment Matrix (base year 2024)
AI-exposure research baseAnthropic Economic Index; Felten, Raj & Seamans (AIOE); Eloundou et al. — combined as a weighted ensemble with cross-source disagreement feeding the confidence rating
Capacity, buffer & fiscalgovfin_mn_county_revenue_mix: 2022 Census of Governments, Survey of Government Finances; lodes_mn_county_flows: LEHD LODES8 OD 2023, JT00/S000; sources: mn_main, mn_aux, ia_aux, nd_aux, sd_aux, wi_aux; qwi_mn_county_naics3_age: Census QWI (qwi/sa), quarters [&#x27;2025-Q1&#x27;, &#x27;2025-Q2&#x27;, &#x27;2025-Q3&#x27;, &#x27;2025-Q4&#x27;], sex=0, ownercode=A05 (private), 96 NAICS-3 + &#x27;00&#x27; all-industry
MethodologyCAERI v1.0.0 · public methodology · scores generated 2026-10-02 · page generated 2026-10-04
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