A vibrant central city is vital to regional prosperity
Updated data from Joe Cortright of Impressa on the continuation of young professionals choosing to live in central cities. Cortright, using American Community Survey data, looks at the change in the number of 25-34 year olds with a four-year degree living in the largest city in each region with a population of one million of […]
Republican Governor and business community pushing for higher taxes
You read the headline right. In Oklahoma, not Michigan. NPR, in a story entitled Tax cuts put Oklahoma in a bind, now Gov. Fallin wants to raise taxes, provides an overview of the push to raise taxes in a deeply red state. NPR writes: In her State of the State address Monday, Gov. Mary Fallin […]
Needed for all: education for losing job(s)
Must-read Linkedin column by Heather E. McGowan entitled Preparing Students to Lose Their Job. It is the best description I have read on the need to change 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 […]
Regional prosperity increasingly linked to four-year degrees
In my last post we look at the growing wage premium for those who have a four-year degree or more. Debunking the conventional wisdom that our kids are now better off foregoing a four-year degree to go into the skilled/professional trades. In this post I want to explore the importance of four-year degrees to state […]
The four-year degree wage premium is growing
The core lesson Michigan Future has learned in more than a quarter of a century of research about the Michigan and national economy is that the single best predictor of individual and community prosperity is a four-year degree. This, of course, is now not conventional wisdom. We are constantly bombarded by way too many business […]
Amazon says no to Michigan for HQ2. We aren’t surprised.
Michigan’s two big metros not being selected as finalist for the Amazon’s HQ2 should not surprise anyone. Amazon made clear that it wanted—really needed—to locate in a community with high talent concentrations today and tomorrow. Neither metro Detroit nor metro Grand Rapids are competitive talent magnets. The reality is that in the growing high wage […]
An expanded safety net for a disruptive economy
Policymakers in both Lansing and Washington seem hellbent on slashing the safety net. In part, they argue, because a too generous safety net gives folks an incentive not to work. The evidence suggests the opposite. As we detail in our Minnesota policy case study, Minnesota has by far the highest proportion of adults who work […]
Google finds STEM skills aren’t the most important skills
Terrific Washington Post column on research done by Google on the skills that matter most to its employees success. Big surprise: it wasn’t STEM. The Post writes: Sergey Brin and Larry Page, both brilliant computer scientists, founded their company on the conviction that only technologists can understand technology. Google originally set its hiring algorithms to sort for […]
The path to good-paying careers without a BA ain’t what you think
In 1999 Michigan Future, Inc. did research to identify the pathway young adults in metro Detroit without a four-year degree took to obtaining good-paying jobs. The research involved both focus groups and phone interviews. The core finding of that research was that the predominate path to good-paying jobs for those without a four-year degree is […]
California more prosperous, Kansas less prosperous
Over the past decade or so we have been writing a lot about California and Kansas. Because California in the 00s was considered in permanent decline and then with the election of Jerry Brown as Governor in 2010 went all in on a big tax increase and expanded public investments. Kansas because it took the […]