Two decades later, report finds that knowledge workers, not factory jobs, remain key to prosperity
Twenty years after the first edition of Michigan Future, Inc. and the University of Michigan’s report titled A New Path to Prosperity? Manufacturing and Knowledge-Based Industries As Drivers of Economic Growth was released, the two organizations are releasing a second edition which contains a startling finding: Michigan’s economic standing has plummeted with Michigan now ranking […]
Michigan’s Prosperity Will Be Generation Z Driven
Adapted from Michigan Future, Inc. President Lou Glazer’s Growing Michigan Together Council presentation on November 2, 2023. Michigan was a 20th Century high-prosperity state. Now we are a 21st Century low-prosperity state. Ranking 39th in per capita income, 13 percent below the national average in 2022. This is the lowest Michigan has been compared to […]
Michigan’s Path to Prosperity
Editor’s Note: This article appeared in the September/October 2023 issue of the Michigan Planner. The Michigan Planner magazine is delivered six times per year to members of the Michigan Association of Planning, the Michigan Chapter of the American Planning Association. The Michigan Association of Planning exists to promote quality community planning through education, information and advocacy, […]
Explaining Michigan’s economic well-being decline
Michigan’s per capita income in 2022 was 13 percent below the national average, the lowest compared to the nation ever. The state ranked 39th. (For those who prefer median household income as a measure of economic well being, Michigan ranks 37th.) Michigan is now structurally one of the nation’s poorest states. This, of course, is the exact […]
Fixing the damn roads isn’t the answer
When it comes to getting younger––particularly retaining and attracting recent college graduates––fixing the damn roads is not the answer. In a recent report the Citizens Research Council includes a top and bottom ten list of state road conditions compiled by the U.S. Government Accountability Office. The top ten states in order are • Nevada •North Dakota •Florida […]
The cold weather population growth playbook
The Growing Michigan Together Council should look to Minnesota for the cold weather state population growth playbook. Conventional wisdom has had it for decades that Americans were abandoning cold weather states for the Sun Belt and the Mountain West. By and large that conventional wisdom is accurate, but not for Minnesota. Minnesota has not lost a congressional seat for […]
Our growing Michigan together recommendations
Michigan’s new Growing Michigan Together council and its workgroups have an opportunity to reverse four decades of Michigan population, employment, and household income decline. What follows is the Michigan Future Board‘s recommendations on what needs to be accomplished for creating a Michigan economy that achieves rising income for all. Michigan was a 20th Century high-prosperity state. Now we are […]
Coding vs foreign languages; Snyder vs Cuban
This post was originally published in November 2017. It is arguably more relevant today than then. As Farhad Manjoo details in a recent New York Times column coding will not be a high-paid occupation for much longer. As this post made clear technical/occupation specific skills are not foundational to successful forty-year careers. That what is […]
Jamie Dimon on expaning the Earned Income Tax Credit
Jamie Dimon, Chairman of the Board and Chief Executive Officer of JPMorgan Chase & Co, in his latest Letter to Shareholders calls for a big expansion of the federal Earned Income Tax Credit. He writes: The gap between skilled and unskilled workers has been growing dramatically – so much so that unskilled labor has become […]
The Neighborhood Talent Concentration Initiative
Now is the time to make fundamental change in the state’s economic development playbook. What we have been doing has not worked. Michigan’s per capita income has fallen from around the national average at the turn of the century to a record low thirteen percent below: falling from 18th in 2000 to 38th in 2022. […]