GREENVILLE – The line began forming an hour before the food truck arrived, starting in the parking lot next to the barren acreage where once stood the nation’s largest refrigerator factory and winding around the front of the former UAW hall. Men and women, some with children, held empty boxes and laundry baskets they soon […]
unemployment
Posted inBusiness Watch
State caught in troubling jobless trend
Almost half of Michigan’s unemployed in 2012 were jobless for at least six months. And the average jobless Michigan resident went without work for more than 10 months. As Michigan’s economy improves and job openings proliferate, a troubling trend is revealing itself in kitchen-table stories and government analyses: The long-term jobless may be in danger […]
Posted inBusiness Watch
Average Michigan wage earner is $5,000 behind other Americans
When politicians talk about Michigan’s “lost decade” of the 2000s, they usually focus on the huge number of jobs shed by the state. Michigan lost 863,300 payroll jobs between April 2000 and July 2009, at the bottom of the state’s downturn, or nearly one out of every five jobs. But a less-discussed element of that […]
Posted inMichigan Government
Snyder gets his changes; consequences unclear
Michigan won’t be reinvented in a day. Or a dog year. But as Gov. Rick Snyder concludes his first (human) year in office, the general course he defined as a candidate is coming into view as legislative markers are set. Eight years of partisan division and economic decline prompted public interest groups such as The […]
Posted inBusiness Watch
Will they ever work again?
File this under depressing chart of the day: http://tpmdc.talkingpointsmemo.com/2011/11/chart-of-the-day-long-term-unemployment-is-a-huge-problem—-especially-if-youre-old.php?ref=fpa About 1 in 3 of the officially jobless have now been without work for more than a year. For the context: The previous high for that figure in the last half-century was about 14 percent. With Michiganrunning a jobless rate above 11 percent — and with […]
Posted inQuality of Life
Michigan poised for better days
The idea that no one would ever think of moving to Michigan because our economy is an utter wreck has, sadly, seeped into the pores of our body politic. It’s almost beyond debate now that we can’t sell Michigan to those who don’t live here. I’m still not buying the argument. And my reasons rest […]