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…
In our last post we reviewed the Centre for Cities report on what predicts economic success at the regional level in the United Kingdom. The report's characterization of successful regions as reinventors and lagging regions as replicators is quite insightful and…
Despite all the headlines and headline statistics that say that the Michigan economy is "back" the reality is that many Michiganders are worse off today than they were prior to the onset of the Great Recession. The table at the…
The evidence continues to pour in that those with a four-year degree or more have the highest incomes and wages. Not that a four-year degree guarantees you either a job or high wages and income, but that it is for,…
Important set of articles from Bridge on projected job growth in Michigan over the next decade. Definitely worth reading! (The lead article can be found here and a Q&A with me here.) Using the 2013-2023 job projections from the US…
Michigan was the birthplace of the 20th Century American mass middle class. Largely built on a foundation of high paid blue collar –– mainly unionized factory –– jobs. It is the main reason Michigan was one of the most prosperous…
We close our presentations with "either Michigan gets younger and better educated or we will get poorer". Both matter and for both the trends are not good. Many of these posts are about the necessity of getting better educated. Michigan…
Don Grimes and I are just putting the finishing touches on our annual report on the Michigan economy. It will be out in mid September. The genesis of these reports is the publication in 2006 of Michigan Future's A New Agenda…
Micheline Maynard wrote an insightful article for Atlantic Cities entitled The Midwest's Big Economic Miscalculation. She writes particularly about Michigan's continuing belief that the auto industry will once again be the engine of economic good times as it was for most…
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…