The economic debate we should be having in the 2018 election
The preeminent challenge of our times is figuring out how to reverse what is being called the Great Decoupling. Where even when the economy is growing––as it has been in Michigan since the end of the Great Recession––only those at the top are benefiting from that growth. The policy priority needs to be reestablishing an […]
Google, Business Leaders for Michigan and standardized tests
As we explored in my Google finds that STEM aren’t the most important skills post, Google determined that “the seven top characteristics of success at Google are all soft skills: being a good coach; communicating and listening well; possessing insights into others (including others different values and points of view); having empathy toward and being […]
Stop whining, raise wages
So says Neel Kashkari, president and chief executive of the Federal Reserve Bank of Minneapolis. Specifically Business North reports he said in a recent speech: “Almost everywhere I go, businesses tell me they can’t find workers. I always ask them the same question: ‘Are you raising wages?’ Usually, the answer is ‘no.’ When you want more of something […]
The BA wage premium keeps growing
The chart below makes clear, once again, that those with a four-year degree or more earn the highest wages. And that advantage is growing. Unabated from 1979 through 2017. This data also make clear that the demand for those with some college or an associate’s degree is declining, not expanding, as conventional wisdom has it. We […]
Getting a BA means more work and higher wages
The Bureau of Labor Statistics each year publishes a chart that details the unemployment rate and median weekly earnings by education attainment for those 25 and older. The data for 2107 are below. Year after year the same story. Each time I look at the new data the question that comes to mind is “how […]
Preparing for a career not a first job
This is a rerun of a 2013 post. I thought it worth rerunning because it describes well how one puts together a successful forty-year career in an economy where the nature of work is constantly changing. It is about a Michigan State student developing in Heather McGowan’s framing her career success operating system, not a […]
Are we Michissippi?
Another list of economic well being that you don’t want to be on that Michigan is on. This one comes from Harvard University economists Benjamin Austin, Edward Glaeser, and Lawrence Summers. They map the growth in the share of men who are not working across major regions of the United States, revealing that the share of […]
No talent, no transit, no Amazon
So Grand Rapids offered Amazon up to $2 billion in tax breaks to locate their HQ2 in their region. As John Gallagher points out in a Detroit Free Press article on the topic, big tax breaks were offered across the nation. What is more noteworthy in Gallagher’s article are the comments by Birgit Klohs, metro […]
Google, Snyder and McGowan on essential skills
In her Linkedin column Heather E. McGowan calls for a transformation of the mission of education. From one that prepares people for a job to one that prepares people for continuous job loss. Largely because of machines increasingly doing the work now done by humans, we are now in an economy where losing a job will […]
California: Higher taxes and surging
Turns out that California since 2010 has contributed 20 percent of the country’s GDP growth with 12 percent of the country’s population. As we explored previously this growth occurred primarily after California passed a major tax increase in 2012. And was written off as in permanent decline by many during the Great Recession. Conventional wisdom had […]