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Upjohn: slow jobs turnaround underway
Jobs coming back, just not all of them
Updated: Saturday, 02 Oct 2010, 8:00 AM EDT
Published : Saturday, 02 Oct 2010, 8:00 AM EDT
GRAND RAPIDS, Mich. (WOOD) - "Turnaround is slowly taking place," is how the Upjohn Institute sums up the West Michigan jobs market over the years.
But the most dramatic part of the summary of a new 33-page report comes in the last paragraph: When it comes to jobs, March 2000 is the month to beat.
Ten years ago, there were 100,000 more people working in West Michigan than there are today.That's about half the population of Grand Rapids. In March 2000, there were 875,000 people with jobs in the region, according to the report. Now, the region's employment is 769,960.
The decline in jobs will certainly show up in the next census report. When people can't find jobs, they leave.
Or they start their own businesses. The report finds that employment in the first six months of 2010 grew 1.9% if you count the self-employed. But growth was nearly flat, .3%, if they're not counted.
The biggest stumbling block still comes from the manufacturing sector.
Nationwide, manufacturing jobs went up 1.3%, a "robust" 7.5% statewide, perhaps attributable to the rebounding auto sector.
But manufacturing jobs fell .3% in West Michigan.
The report also looks at the area's recessions and how long it took to bounce back from the "trough," the employment dip. In 1991, it took five months. In 2001, it took six months. But there was never a full recovery from 2001.
Unfortunately, economists aren't sure about our current trough. Upjohn predicts jobs will come back, but not all of them. When they come back, though, remains the great unanswered question.
On the Net:
Upjohn Jobs Report (pdf)
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