For the first time in 23 years, Michigan’s unemployment rate is in the double digits — 10.6% to be exact, a figure one-third higher than the national average.
That number is an increase from November’s rate of 9.6%, according to the state Department of Energy, Labor and Economic Growth (DELEG). Between November and December, “total employment dropped by 68,000 and unemployment rose by 47,000, as the state labor force declined by 21,000 over the month,” according to DELEG. A year before, in December 2007, the rate was 7.4% — 2 1/2 percentage points higher than the national average.
According to the Detroit Free Press:
The last time Michigan’s jobless rate was in double digits was September 1985, when the rate was 10% on its way down from a height of 16.9% during the depth of the 1982 recession.
As of November, Michigan had posted the worst unemployment rate of any of the 50 states. The federal government will report state jobless rankings later this month.
You’ve got yourself a winner of a state government there, Michigan. Add the failing automakers to the disastrous Granholm tenure, and you’re looking at a single-state depression looming.
Steve Maley
Moe Lane
Dan McLaughlin
Neil Stevens
I think we will see 15% unemployment here in Michigan within 2 years
JSobieski (Diary) Thursday, January 22nd at 12:28PM EST (link)Gotta love it.
My rules of the road for primary season.
Rule #1: Vote for YOUR first choice in the primaries
Rule #2: Vote for the R in the general.
Rule #3: Don’t let anyone convince you to violate Rule #1 or Rule #2
Rule #4: When in a center-right argument, reaffirm Rules #1-#3–it will help us all to get along better.
Rule #5: If you are using the language of the left, you probably aren’t furthering conservativism
Rule #6: The priority is issues first, candidates second, and supporters third. Nobody is bigger than the issues. Conversely, if you spend your time focusing on supporters, you are wasting everyone’s time.
STOP THE MADNESS!
A reduction in the rate of spending increases is NOT a cut!
In-state tuition for illegals is NOT amnesty!
Requiring someone to pay their medical bills is NOT an individual mandate!
Reducing tax rates is NOT a tax increase!
I think that figure is low
izoneguy (Diary) Thursday, January 22nd at 12:36PM EST (link)30% will be more like it.
I don’t see the Big 3 turning the corner.
The point cannot be made often enough: Modern liberalism, as embodied in the Obama presidency, is the defender of the status quo. And the status quo is a road to economic ruin. Political forces cannot redistribute the wealth that the economic system does not produce.
30%? For UE to hit 30%, people would need to get laid off and stay in Michigan
JSobieski (Diary) Thursday, January 22nd at 12:39PM EST (link)Migration will prevent a 30% unemployment rate–not to mention make land really cheap
My rules of the road for primary season.
Rule #1: Vote for YOUR first choice in the primaries
Rule #2: Vote for the R in the general.
Rule #3: Don’t let anyone convince you to violate Rule #1 or Rule #2
Rule #4: When in a center-right argument, reaffirm Rules #1-#3–it will help us all to get along better.
Rule #5: If you are using the language of the left, you probably aren’t furthering conservativism
Rule #6: The priority is issues first, candidates second, and supporters third. Nobody is bigger than the issues. Conversely, if you spend your time focusing on supporters, you are wasting everyone’s time.
STOP THE MADNESS!
A reduction in the rate of spending increases is NOT a cut!
In-state tuition for illegals is NOT amnesty!
Requiring someone to pay their medical bills is NOT an individual mandate!
Reducing tax rates is NOT a tax increase!
There won't be anywhere to go
izoneguy (Diary) Thursday, January 22nd at 12:44PM EST (link)It won’t be as bad in some places but it does cost a bunch of money to move. People will literally be stuck between the UAW & Obama.
Obama will keep the federal disaster relief dollars flowing in to stem the tide of riotous mobs.
The point cannot be made often enough: Modern liberalism, as embodied in the Obama presidency, is the defender of the status quo. And the status quo is a road to economic ruin. Political forces cannot redistribute the wealth that the economic system does not produce.
People are leaving the state in droves
JSobieski (Diary) Thursday, January 22nd at 2:32PM EST (link)otherwise, the UE rate would be much higher already.
I suspect there will be an increasing number of abandoned houses in the state as the migration picks up
My rules of the road for primary season.
Rule #1: Vote for YOUR first choice in the primaries
Rule #2: Vote for the R in the general.
Rule #3: Don’t let anyone convince you to violate Rule #1 or Rule #2
Rule #4: When in a center-right argument, reaffirm Rules #1-#3–it will help us all to get along better.
Rule #5: If you are using the language of the left, you probably aren’t furthering conservativism
Rule #6: The priority is issues first, candidates second, and supporters third. Nobody is bigger than the issues. Conversely, if you spend your time focusing on supporters, you are wasting everyone’s time.
STOP THE MADNESS!
A reduction in the rate of spending increases is NOT a cut!
In-state tuition for illegals is NOT amnesty!
Requiring someone to pay their medical bills is NOT an individual mandate!
Reducing tax rates is NOT a tax increase!
Back in the early '80s, we called them "black and whites."
Achance (Diary) Thursday, January 22nd at 2:39PM EST (link)The licence plates of all the Rust Belt states were almost all black and white back then and pickups looking like something out of the Dust Bowl era were a very common sight in Alaska. These guys had lost their job in MI, PA, OH or wherever so they packed up wife, kids, and stuff in a pickup and went “North to the Future.” Unfortunatly, the Boom didn’t last very long and lots of them got to migrate right back South by the mid-to-late ’80s.
In Vino Veritas
It's not like we weren't warned
owise1 Thursday, January 22nd at 12:43PM EST (link)A Democrat governor. A Democrat legislature. Double-digit unemployment. And a Democrat President who promised us that things were going to get worse, probably for a long time.
You get what you pay for.
I dodged a Michigan bullet
MelZ (Diary) Thursday, January 22nd at 12:44PM EST (link)My husband just recently interviewed for a resident program in Kalamzaoo. I told him from the get-go I was not interested in living in that bluer than blue state.
Then, I did some investigating on jobs up there just to see…there were ZERO jobs posted for non-profit work and like 4 for sales/marketing, another big ZERO for PR.
Finally talked the husband into ranking Kalamazoo dead LAST. I would rather be in Shreveport!
MelZ
Not quite fair, but I get the point...
mikefisk (Diary) Thursday, January 22nd at 1:13PM EST (link)…Kalamazoo’s unemployment rate is much lower than the state as a whole. I live and work there
That being said, I wouldn’t voluntarily move into Michigan unless other options didn’t present themselves. I’ve just happened to be in the state the near-entirety of my life.
“Once within the maw of Leviathan, degree of digestion is irrelevant.” – Michael Fisk
9.25, -4.77
I'm sure it has nothing to do with political ideology...
cump Thursday, January 22nd at 12:46PM EST (link)Governor – Democrat
Senator #1 -Democrat
Senator #2 -Democrat
Congressmen – 10 Democrats 7 Repubs
Detroit Mayor – Democrat
Lansing Mayor – Democrat
blah blah blah
i don’t believe i need to continue or say anything further.
but you leave out so many
Wayne (Diary) Thursday, January 22nd at 4:39PM EST (link)if you don’t list the mayor of Flint, Pontiac, Saginaw, Bay City, Ann Arbor, Muskegon, Grand Rapids. Not to mention Benton Harbor, and most of the towns in the UP.
And, Kalamazoo. I think the only reason you’re not up there with everyone else, Mike, is the universities and Upjohn hire so many folks.
“Hell, these are Marines. Men like them held Guadalcanal, and took Iwo Jima, Baghdad ain’t s–t”. Maj. Gen. John F. Kelly, USMC, Deputy CG, First MEF
Unemployment is understated
dwarfmama (Diary) Thursday, January 22nd at 12:46PM EST (link)The unemployment rate calculation chronically understates the actual rate of unemployment in the kind of long-term down-trend Michigan has been suffering. A person who has been unemployed for longer than 6 months is no longer considered to be looking for a job; hence, no longer “unemployed.”
I was employed (briefly) in Michigan 3-4 years ago. As I was packing to return to this job, I received a call from a local fund-raiser. When I explained that I was leaving the area, she volunteered that about 30% of the people she called were out of work. She may have been exaggerating some, but if the unemployment rate hasn’t been in double digits for several years, it’s only because so many people have moved out of state.
How bad is it? Pick any city in the lower 48, outside Michigan. Look up how much it would cost to rent one-way moving equipment from that city to someplace in Michigan, versus the opposite direction.
Our contest is not only whether we ourselves shall be free, but whether there shall be left to mankind an asylum on earth for civil and religious liberty. (Samuel Adams)
We might be #2 here
Darin_H (Diary) Thursday, January 22nd at 1:52PM EST (link)Heard on the radio this morning that Oregon’s UE rate is over 9% now (and it would probably be 15+% if we could pump our own gas).
Hmmmm, what do Michigan and Oregon have in common that could lead to such high unemployment???
A visionary coward says that anger can be power, as long as there’s a victim on TV – Flat Top, Goo Goo Dolls
I thought that no-self serve craziness was just NJ (nt)
zuiko (Diary) Thursday, January 22nd at 1:58PM EST (link)Underlying most arguments against the free market is a lack of belief in freedom itself. – Milton Friedman
We're as good as New Jersey!
Darin_H (Diary) Thursday, January 22nd at 2:42PM EST (link)Not quite the slogan they use to try and get people here
Apparently a high school drop-out is qualified to pump gas but I’m not. At least I can wait the 15 minutes it takes to get a full tank.
A visionary coward says that anger can be power, as long as there’s a victim on TV – Flat Top, Goo Goo Dolls
Unemployment as of December 2008
From ME to You (Diary) Thursday, January 22nd at 6:55PM EST (link)MICHIGAN 9.6 D D, D
RHODE ISLAND 9.3 R D, D
CALIFORNIA 8.4 R(?) D, D
48 SOUTH CAROLINA 8.4 R R, R
47 OREGON 8.1
Try again!! UE as reported Dec 2008
From ME to You (Diary) Thursday, January 22nd at 7:09PM EST (link)MICHIGAN 9.6
RHODE ISLAND 9.3
CALIFORNIA 8.4
SOUTH CAROLINA 8.4
OREGON 8.1
In August 2006 (#4)Michigan’s unemployment rate was 6.8% and Mississippi was #1 among states with 7.9%. Alaska(currently 4 way tie for 9th) was #2 with 7%. Beautiful Maine went from 4.1% to 6.3% in this time frame. I expect this to go up now that the holiday season has ended!
But The One™ has taken over so the problems should disappear soon!
Oregon is 9% for December
JoeG Thursday, January 22nd at 10:41PM EST (link)It will be 10.5% to 11% for January.
Kowalski
JoeG Thursday, January 22nd at 10:44PM EST (link)And we went from one R one D for senator to double dems.
The state house and senate are now under uncontested dem control.
I live in The Peoples Republic of Michigan, in Grand Blanc.
gekster (Diary) Thursday, January 22nd at 8:55PM EST (link)I was told that The Peoples Republic of Michigan has the third highest combined business tax in the world.
There was some country in Europe, the US Government,
and then The Peoples Republic of Michigan.
I don’t know how accurate that is, but it is close.
And now put on top of that a recent Green Bill that went into effect in December and made the gas bills go up by 1/3.
Mrs. Granbi..holm wanted that bill because it would create a couple of thousand jobs over ten or so years.
She didn’t say that it would drive out tens of thousands from the state.
We allready have the third largest exodus from the state now.
The Government here just keeps doing things to drive people out, and doesn’t shrink the Government to fit the amount of people accordingly.
Those are Democrats.
And what business would want to come here to give most of the money it makes to a Government that doesn’t know anything but tax and spend our problems away, and the problems don’t seem to go away.
And we had a chance to get a large influx of jobs here, but that didn’t happen.
About three or for years ago, a major auto company wanted to put a plant in Grand Rapids. I forget wich one.
They were told that to play in The Peoples Republic of Michigan, they had to be union, because the political doners who got me elected are unions.
They said that was ok with them.
They went 250 miles south,
to play in Indiana..
They say Republicans are for the rich, Democrats are for the poor.
If they need more voters,
then they have to make more of who they are for.
We are there in the various Tea Party groups, leaderless, but not rudderless.
We steer always toward the Constitutional principles this nation was founded upon.
Erick Brockway
Ok folks, 2012 is here. Get involved
We need to call this the blue state recession
JoeG Thursday, January 22nd at 10:38PM EST (link)The worst hit states are all dem run.
I live in Oregon, and we’re just shy of 9% – in December. New numbers are out next week, and it WILL be in the high 10′s if not 11%.
We’ve actually started losing folks after years of increases since many can’t find jobs.