New report: the metro Grand Rapids economy
From 2001-2010, the seven county Grand Rapids regional economy performed better than the Michigan economy. That said it was a decade of decline. And the region in 2010 was one of the poorest of all the metropolitan areas in the country with a population of one million or more. Employment and Wages In 2010 there […]
New report: the metro Detroit economy
As bad as the Michigan economy was from 2001-2010, the nine county Detroit regional economy was worse. As the epicenter of the domestic auto industry, the region suffered most from the near collapse of the Detroit Three. Employment and Wages In 2010 there were 1.996 million jobs in metro Detroit, a decline of 454,000––an unprecedented […]
New report: the Michigan economy
As poor as the national economy was this past decade, Michigan was worse. Basically at or near the bottom on all the metrics covered in our new annual report. During the national expansion, many referred to Michigan’s economy as a single-state recession. We believe that Michigan’s experience during the 2001–2007 expansion is far better characterized […]
New report: the U.S. economy
The period covered in our new annual report, 2001 to 2010, was noteworthy for its weakness nationally. The expansion from 2001 to 2007 was anemic, with low rates of job and income growth, largely driven by the unsustainable housing and construction bubble; then followed by the worst downturn since the Great Depression and a tepid […]
Raising our standard of living
Michigan Future’s work started with the question “where do we want to go from here?” Our answer: a high-prosperity Michigan – a place with a per capita income consistently above the national average in both national economic expansions and contractions. A Michigan once again with a broad middle class. At the core of our work […]
Previews of our new report
Two recent articles preview our upcoming annual progress report on Michigan’s transition to a knowledge-based economy. This is will be the fifth of these reports that Don Grimes and I have done on how well Michigan is doing compared to the country in terms of employment and particularly personal income. And which states are doing […]
The irrelevance of tax rankings again
In a March 2011 I wrote a post about how the Tax Foundation’s rankings compare to state economic well being. I did something similar in a column for Dome in 2009. Both presented data that doing well in business climate rankings have little or nothing to do with how well a state’s economy is performing. […]
Michigan’s demographic challenge
We close our presentations with “either Michigan gets younger and better educated or we will get poorer”. Both matter and for both the trends are not good. Many of these posts are about the necessity of getting better educated. Michigan is 34th in the proportion of adults with a four year degree. In an increasingly […]
Education and inequality
We have written frequently on the correlation between college attainment and both income and employment. It is now the best predictor of both. (See data in this previous post.) Education attainment is also a––if not the–major cause of rising income inequality. College attainment is by far the best pathway out of poverty and to the […]
An anti-poverty agenda
Paul Tough concludes his must read new book, How Children Succeed, with ideas on how American can far better deal with poverty. He starts with a belief that the best of the urban reform schools across the country (KIPP and others), although they have made a real difference in the lives of low income, largely […]