I recently came across this article from late October that was published in the Pine Knot News of northeastern Minnesota.  The article is headlined “Director-less funeral home trims services“.

I’m from Minnesota and know a little about northeastern Minnesota which is a large lumber and iron ore producing area.  Generally, the communities are small and, for the most part, far apart.  Duluth, with a port on Lake Superior is the major city.  In my lifetime, the area has typically been known for the hockey players that came from what we call the “Iron Range”.

On that front, the lightly populated Iron Range and Duluth were tremendously over-represented on the 1980 Miracle on Ice Gold Medal hockey team with five of the twenty Gold Medal players – Bill Baker, John Harrington, Buzzy Schneider, Mark Pavelich, and Phil Verchota  – all from that region of Minnesota.

Here’s a somewhat dated photo of my son, Jack — who is now 27 years old and a former hockey player– wearing John Harrington’s Gold Medal from 1980!!  That’s John in the background raising money for the Herb Brooks Foundation.

 

However, smaller communities far apart leads to a problem that Death Care is seeing right now.  That problem is a low number of services per funeral home.

To that end, the Atkins-Northland Funeral Home of Cloquet, Minnesota, got some publicity by announcing by manager Mike Dilley through the linked article “that  the funeral home is being selective in providing services as it struggles to find a director. . . .  “it’s so hard” to get directors in more-rural areas, with a perception that there’s “nothing here”.  Dilley also added to his statement by saying, “We’re not closed.”

Tom Anderson
Funeral Director Daily

Funeral Director Daily take:  According to the article, Atkins-Northland Funeral Home is owned by Foundation Partners Group (FPG) and in checking the FPG website, it is listed as one of their “brands”.  The article also mentions that FPG owns the Cremation Society of Minnesota which has a chapel in Duluth — 21 miles from Cloquet according to Google Maps.

I looked on the Atkins-Northland Funeral Home website, which you can find here, and noticed that as late as November 14 the funeral home did operate a funeral from their facility.  So, they must be open and be getting professional help from their partner firm 21 miles away.

The Bigger Question — The bigger question is where is our profession in relation to the need for licensed funeral professionals as we move into the future?  The United States Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS), as of 2023, estimated that there are 23,910 licensed professionals in our industry.  The BLS also believes that funeral professional employment will grow by about 3.7% through 2032 and that about 5,700 job openings (because of growth, but mostly retirements) will be created per year.  Here is the 2023 data from the BLS on Morticians, Undertakers, and Funeral Arrangers.

According to this 2023 data from the American Board of Funeral Service Education (ABFSE) in the year 2022 there were 3,462 new enrollees in Mortuary Science education but the report also showed a 30% attrition rate for a net total of 2,423 students per year.

So, the bigger question is, “If the BLS says we need 5,700 job seekers per year for the next several years and our schools are only putting out 2,423 per year, are more funeral homes going to be in the same situation as the Minnesota funeral home finds itself in at this time?  Or, might a solution be that many small town funeral homes close which would require their citizens to use regional center type cities miles away and their Death Care facilities for their needs?

Related Article — Here is information from the Education Data Initiative which relates that the “Drop-out” rate of college freshman is about 22.3%.  There is information from each state in the data also.

Related Article —  Here is a January 10, 2025, article from Funeral Director Daily titled, “Where are we with Funeral Director employment . . .and what might that mean”

More news from the world of Death Care:

• Growing life after death:  Green Burials.  The Wooster Voice (OH)
• Life beyond the grave.  Sierra
• Symbolism of cemetery plants:  How flowers, trees, and other botanical motifs honor those buried beneath.  The Conversation
• Blog:  Hold your loved one again with cremation alternative.  The Business Journal (CA)

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