Michigan loses jobs; rate worst in nation

[BeatleBoot]

http://www.detnews.com/2005/business/0501/20/A01-65300.htm

Michigan loses jobs; rate worst in nation

Analysts say the state is losing ground as another 15,000 positions are cut.

Michigan's jobless rate climbed to 7.3 percent in December, a new high for the year that could leave the state with the worst unemployment rate in the nation.

More than 369,000 state residents were out of work in December, reducing the number of people working in Michigan to a 2004 low of 4.6 million.

Overall, Michigan lost 15,000 payroll jobs compared to November, due largely to losses in retail, education and health services.

<more at link>

[notadmblnd]

1. getting my last unemployment check today.

we'll be ok though.

[notadmblnd]

2. why does no one ever cite IT?

Michigan was a huge hub for Information Technology. thousands upon thousands of jobs have been lost in Mich along with the losses in education, manufacturing and retail.

[jswordy]

4. IT is the cruelest twist

I lived in the rust belt in the early 1980s when unemployment was so awful. IT was sold to those states as the next big thing that would keep their people employed. The pitch was that the rust belt states lost outg because they had failed to catch the IT curve.

So many of them went to IT all-out, training their folks and offering incentives to companies.

Now those jobs are shipping overseas, too. I wonder what the next big supposed savior will be?

To me, we need to get our manufacturing base back again if we ever hope to be back on top of the employment wave.

[fob]

7. "I wonder what the next big supposed savior will be?"

Can you say d-r-a-f-t?

[jayfish]

9. It Could Be Farming..

alpacas. I saw a commercial for it. :silly:

http://www.alpacanet.com/

Jay

[fob]

10. Do alpacas travel well in sand?

:evilgrin:

[Robert Oak]

5. IT isn't organized, sitting duck

no labor organization whatsoever.

Labor can't fight the incredible propaganda machine, so IT
doesn't stand much of a chance.

[purji]

3. Yep

I,ve been looking for work for two months. Seems like Michigan (at least Detroit area)gets hit first and recovers last.I don't know if that is really true but it feels like it.
We've been playing the find a job game for over two years now,since the lay offs in 2002, at the auto companies.

[KamaAina]

6. Yippee! We've turned the corner!

Um, what's that? Oh crikey, it's an oncoming 18-wheeler...AAAAAAHHHHHHH!!!

[TahitiNut]

8. January and February will show mass carnage ... despite "seasonal

... adjustments." Engler and the embedded reichbots throughout the state have assured many years of labor devastation. The state has the most regressive taxation policies of any rustbelt state. Both skilled and educated younger workers continue to leave the state in droves, headed for warmer climates with resulting economic growth. (It's another 'hysteresis effect.') Tech jobs are being relocated. My niece's husband just got his job relocated to Arizona - he was given the option of going there on his own, so they did. They're now having to dump their new home into a market that's beginning to take a dive.

[jswordy]

11. But the one good thing for your niece and husband is...

...whatever they lose on their Michigan home will be made up in short order by the appreciation of their Arizona home, which is double digits in most of the state annually.

Unfortunately, I see the shift of jobs from North to South in slightly different terms. Firms are coming south because there is much less regulation and no unions (union is a bad word here). Hence cheaper wages and worker overhead. But the Southern states are just a stopping off point for that kind of firm. It will eventually jump to Mexico or overseas in its lust for even cheaper wages and less regulation.

We see this now in the South. The plants that came here in the '80s are beginning to dump us to go offshore, leaving in their wakes all the tax incentives and government equipment loans that went into getting them here in the first place. Taxpayers then have to pick up those bills.

The South's job troubles are just coming 20 years later than the North's did.

We must recapture these manufacturing jobs to save our nation. But no one in the elected elite is listening, at all.

[Guns Aximbo]

12. reprisals for not

voting for bushler