It’s been six years since Andrew Rockafellow earned a law degree from Cooley Law School in Lansing. He’ll be lucky to earn $20,000 this year, with no health-care benefits. For those doing the math, Rockafellow’s $100,000 law degree is the equivalent of five years’ pay. By comparison, those graduating with a one-year Cisco certification at […]
Business Watch
Covering the intersection of business and policy, and informing Michigan employers and workers on the long road back from coronavirus. Our Michigan Economic Dashboard shows key metrics that show how the state is performing.
Posted inBusiness Watch
Health costs decide health of Mich.
“Higher doctor fees drive U.S. health care costs, report finds” Well, no surprise there. And no, I’m not saying doctors should work for free or for a pittance. The story behind the story on this is why there’s such a fee differential between the U.S. and the rest of the Western nations. This story is […]
Posted inBusiness Watch
Stomach-churning: Highs and lows in Mich. economy
Michigan has starred in its own disaster movie in the first decade of 21st century. The economic equivalents of F5 tornadoes and magnitude 9 earthquakes have battered the automotive industry and smashed construction work in the state. You knew all that, having lived here. But amid all the destruction there was surprising growth over the […]
Posted inBusiness Watch
Agriculture's growth real, but not the stuff of myth
Late last winter, Gov. Rick Snyder officially dubbed March 17, 2011, as Michigan Agriculture Day. The proclamation lauds the industry as “the source of virtually everything we eat each day,” and says it plays a “key role in the growth and reinvention of Michigan’s economy.” It’s one of the ways that Snyder has singled out […]
Posted inBusiness Watch
Economic shockwave flattens construction industry
Bloomfield Park, an abandoned mixed-use real estate project in Oakland County, stands as an eerie symbol of the construction industry’s collapse in Michigan over the past decade. Looking like the bleak setting of a “Mad Max” movie, the planned $2 billion development on Telegraph Road just north of Square Lake Road was to have featured […]
Posted inBusiness Watch
Scoring the '00s: How Michigan's 14 regions changed
Despite billions of dollars in construction projects on the University of Michigan’s campus and Ann Arbor’s reputation as a high-tech business hotbed, the regional economy there contracted slightly over the past decade. Gross domestic product in the Ann Arbor metro area fell 1 percent between 2001 and 2009 as several major businesses left town. Pfizer […]
Posted inBusiness Watch
Billion-dollar bust?
(Originally published Aug. 10, 2011) A 15-year-long effort to spur jobs and vitality in some of the state’s most economically depressed areas by turning them into virtual tax-free zones — and thereby forgoing about $1 billion in tax collections — is being curtailed by Gov. Rick Snyder. Citing disappointing results in Renaissance Zones, the Snyder […]
Posted inBusiness Watch
Deep inside the Lost Decade: Decline, transformation and resilience in Michigan's regions
Ann Arbor on the east side and Grand Rapids on the west are widely regarded as the most prosperous and desirable metropolitan areas in Michigan. But Kalamazoo-Portage and Battle Creek in Southwest Michigan surprisingly outpaced Ann Arbor, Grand Rapids and all other metro areas in the state in economic growth over the past decade. An […]
Posted inBusiness Watch
Income is small share of business taxes
Emerging from a long debate over the second major revision of the state’s business income tax in a decade, Michigan residents, and maybe some policy-makers, may be surprised by the results of the Council on State Taxation’s annual report on business taxes. Gov. Rick Snyder and allies in the Legislature and business community argued consistently […]
Posted inBusiness Watch
Tax breaks saved mental hospital site, developer says
“Blight” and “Traverse City” aren’t often used in the same sentence. But one large, historically significant property in the picturesque northern Michigan community was so blighted that local officials who wanted to redevelop the site were unable to make much progress — until it was approved as a tax-free Renaissance Zone. The Traverse City Regional […]