Here’s some recent facts and about the Michigan. Michigan’s, and the nations, poor economy is still hitting Michigan’s business and families hard. This is due to Michigan’s industry heavy economy, a sector that has been devastated across America for the last 50 years. I personally believe that a country without a strong industrial base will soon find itself week economically, politically and militarily. There is hope though, but first the latest news from Michigan.
Detroit Tops Nations Unemployment, Michigan ties with California & Somalia for Most Failed State
California and Michigan continue to report the hardest hits, as they have for months. Of the cities with jobless rates of 15% or more, 13 were in California and four were in Michigan.
Among metro areas with populations of 1 million or more, Detroit reported the highest jobless rate at 15.3%, while Riverside, Calif., was second at 14.7%.
Detroit - Highest Office Vacancy Rate in the Nation
Nearly three-quarters of the country’s major metropolitan areas experienced an increase in office vacancies in the first quarter of 2010.
The city of Detroit has the highest office vacancy rate. Mired by troubles within the automotive industry, just over a quarter of all of the office space in the metropolitan region now sits empty.
Michigan Births Drop
The U.S. birth rate dropped nearly 2% in almost every age group — except among women ages 40 and older, according to a report released Tuesday by the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention’s National Center for Health Statistics.
“There is good research … that says the economy is a factor,” said D’Vera Cohn, a senior writer for the Pew Research Center, which also released a study Tuesday linking falling birth rates to the recession.
The trend has particularly big implications in Michigan, where the birth rate has declined since a peak in 1990.
In Michigan, the number of births dropped from 125,394 in 2007 to 121,128 in 2008 — about a 3.4% decline, according to the NCHS. And when compared with the numbers from 1990, it shows Michigan’s birth rate has dropped nearly 21%.
Hope for Michigan Business and Families
Young educated people have been leaving Michigan in droves over the last decades, moving to “cool” states with their “fancy” economies. While the not so educated youth of Michigan are leaving for “cool” states like Colorado, California and Oregon due to their trendy ideals and pot. Several young Michigan natives have moved to Iowa as well. Oh, the good news… Michigan is perfectly situated for surviving, and even thriving, in our global warming world. As global temperatures creep up over the next hundred years Michigan, surrounded by Great Lakes, will become an ideal tropical paradise. Our steamy shark free lakes will be the envy of a starving world, even if the temperatures raise enough for Piranhas to become an invasive species we can still drink the water. In fact, Michigan’s well armed militia will also be well prepared to defend one of the world’s last great sources of fresh water.
More Hopeful Hope
Some Michigan business, like the Ford Motor Company, have even started to make a comeback before global warming have already stabilized and have even began rebuilding market share. Hopefully Michigan can continue to have a strong, but modern, industrial and be able to make up for the job loss that downsizing in the auto and other industries has caused by expanding its tech and service sectors. Auto Engineers can become software engineers and used car salesmen can sell Search Engine Optimization services (that’s a crack on the sometimes tarnished reputation of SEO’s and used car salesmen by the way). However, the one true silver lining is that if Michigan becomes depopulated and poor we can always enjoy Michigan’s greatest blessing, its nature, without industrial waste and the constant encroachment of urban sprawl.