On Thursday afternoon, Governor Tim Walz shadowed another career — taking part in nurse assistant training in Roseville — as part of his ongoing effort to spend a day in various careers and highlight statewide efforts to recruit and retain workers for high-demand positions.

“It’s expensive to care for seniors but we’ve decided as a state and as a nation we care about our seniors and we’re going to invest and make sure that that happens,” Walz told reporters at the Presbyterian Homes and Centers training facility. The legislature and governor approved nearly $270 million for nursing facilities, including $75 million for workforce development like recruiting and retaining workers.

Walz says the state is short about 45,000 workers in the “caring professions” like nursing.

“We certainly struggle,” Rob Lahammer of Presbyterian Homes and Centers told the governor. “Our industry, nursing assistants are tough to find and all that, and we look for public-private partnerships to continue to improve on that….Some additional dollars in the last minute (at the legislature) that came through. We applaud that effort.”

Walz started touring high-demand jobs with a shortage of employees last week. So far, he’s spent time at a manufacturing plant in Plymouth, at a school in Savage highlighting a need for teachers, and in Duluth with police officers.

The legislature passed $20 million in workforce development grants last session to help with hiring or pay increases in a variety of sectors with employment shortages including manufacturing, public safety, technology, caring professions which includes nurses, and education.