the Education Multiplier
Terrific blog by Harvard’s Edward Glaeser in the NY Times on the power of education attainment for regional economies. Worth reading! He finds that today those without college degrees have lower unemployment rates in regions with high college attainment than those without college degrees in regions with low college attainment. So college attainment not only […]
The Trends That Matter
We have been writing for years about two dominant trends in the economy. The first – and the most important – is that the knowledge-based sectors of the economy now account for almost all the job growth and most of the good paying jobs in the American economy. The knowledge-based economy accounts for 80% of […]
A Quality of Place Agenda
Governor-elect Snyder was right on when he wrote in his ten point plan that “many of Michigan’s youth are looking for an appealing metropolitan community – and many are moving out of state to find it”. As is the plan’s list of place attributes that are needed to compete for mobile young talent: safe/walkable urban […]
Not MEDC
We are likely to hear in the coming weeks that restoring the Michigan Economic Development Corporation (MEDC) to its pre Granholm incarnation is a key to the state’s economic turnaround. Don’t believe it! In the 30 months prior to Granholm’s election – when the MEDC supposedly was one of the nation’s best economic development agencies […]
Getting Poorer Quick
In each of our annual progress reports Don Grimes and I have predicted that Michigan’s per capita income would fall to the mid thirties because per capita income is increasingly correlated with a state’s ranking in college attainment. Michigan is 34th in the proportion of adults with a four year degree. We first made the […]
Straight Talk on the State Budget
Gary Olson, who is retiring as the head of the Senate Fiscal Agency, has some sound ideas on how to balance the state budget. He laid them out last week as reported by AnnArbor.com. Worth reading. According to the article his recipe is primarily reducing public employee and retiree compensation and raising taxes mainly by […]
Short vs. Long Term
The new Snyder Administration is going to be under a lot of pressure to do what they can to deliver jobs now. The line will be folks needs jobs now, so that now is not the time to do long term structural change. Big mistake! One we have been making for decades. I don’t know […]
Talent Shortage: High Tech Start Up Leaves Ann Arbor
Important Nathan Bomey article on AnnArbor.com. It’s entitled “University of Michigan microcontroller startup leaving Michigan for Texas”. The reason: not enough talent here. That’s right, not enough talent in our supposedly high tech mecca Ann Arbor. As Bomey writes: The firm, Ambiq Micro, determined that the Austin region offered the best chance of landing the […]
Not Anti Manufacturing
What we get criticized for the most is being anti manufacturing. Specifically anti high paid factory work. The jobs that built middle class Michigan. Nothing could be further from the truth. Believe me if there were a way to recreate a factory based economy we would be in favor of it. We understand that lots of […]
Politics Vs. Economics
I urge you to read back to back two insightful recent columns on the elections. The first from the New York Times’ David Brooks is on the role blue collar households played in the Republican landslide, particularly in the Midwest. The second is from Rick Haglund for mlive.com on a new study from the Chicago […]