The B.A. work earnings premium is growing
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 with a four-year degree or more over a forty-year career worked more and earned more than those with less education…
Why Michigan doesn’t pivot to a high-prosperity economic strategy
The first post I wrote for this blog was 13 years ago. It was entitled the Need For a New Michigan and made the case that what made us prosperous in the past, won't in the future. That if we wanted to recreate a high-prosperity Michigan, the state needed a new economic agenda––one that focused on competing in the rising…
Minnesota has the lowest state unemployment rate ever!
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 1976, the farthest back published data is available.) The national unemployment rate in July was 3.5 percent. In Michigan it…
Detailing the failure of Michigan’s motor vehicle factory strategy
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. That motor vehicle factory strategy has failed. Data from the Quarterly Census of Employment and Wages, Bureau of Labor Statistics…
Detailing the failure of Michigan’s low-tax strategy
Michigan's low-tax strategy has failed. Since 2000 Michigan has experienced––in good times and bad and no matter which party has been in control in Lansing––far worse than the nation employment and wage growth. In 2000 Michigan accounted for 3.6 percent of the nation's employment. In 2021 it had fallen to 2.9 percent. If Michigan's employment were still 3.6 percent of…