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…
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…
This post was originally published in October 2016. 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 Kim Trent…
A little more than three years ago the Grand Rapids Public Museum hosted Outsmarting the Robots: Redesigning education from the classroom to the halls of Lansing. The conference was organized around the question “How do we redesign our system for learning to build the 21st…
In 1979 General Motors employed 468,000 American hourly workers. 76 percent of their U.S. workforce. In 2021 General Motors employed 45,000 American hourly workers. 46 percent of their U.S. workforce. Today 24,000 work at the General Motors Global Technical Center…
In our last post we detailed that states with employment most concentrated in production––front-line factory––jobs are all structurally low-prosperity states, with per capita income substantially below the nation's. Those states include Michigan and Tennessee, both with per capita income twelve…
In 2004 Don Grimes and I wrote A New Path to Prosperity?. The report detailed that prosperous states were no longer manufacturing-based states, but were now those over concentrated in knowledge-based industries. In an accompanying Detroit News op ed, subtitled…
Increasingly our public conversation is dominated by claims that workers can do just as well without a four-year degree as with one. As we have explored frequently, pre pandemic––in both good and bad economic times––that simply was not accurate. Those…
In June Minnesota recorded the lowest state unemployment rate ever. An astonishingly low 1.8 percent. In July Minnesota's unemployment rate remained at a best in the nation, record low 1.8 percent. (Ever in the case of state's unemployment rates means…
As Rick Haglund chronicled for Crain's Detroit Business, since General Motors in 1992 chose Arlington Texas over Willow Run for a motor vehicle assembly plant, Michigan’s economic development priority has been to compete for auto assembly and auto parts plants.…