Michigan's Future

I immigrated to Michigan almost 20 years ago. But my wife, Patti, is a born and bred Michigander who grew up in Flint the youngest daughter of Don and Jean Fridline. Don and Jean each spent 30+ years working at GM while having 6 sons and 2 daughters. All 8 children settled in Michigan, 7 of them living within a 30-minute drive.

Patti still tells me stories of how nice it used to be in Flint. Good jobs were easily had. It seemed like everyone worked in the “shop” where American Cars were made with pride.

Well, those days are over. No matter how nostalgic we get, or how many movies we make about the “evil” empire GM relocating factories to the south and/or south of the border, nothing is going to bring those jobs back. GM is in business to make money. That is or should be the goal of every company in America. So don’t expect this post to be another “Roger and Me.”

I went to my niece’s going away party last night. Patti and I have 13 nieces and nephews on her side of the family. All 4 who are old enough, have graduated from college. Of those 4, only 1 remains in the state. The other 3 have started their lives in New York, Colorado, and Florida.

Is what we are seeing in our family a trend? With me being an engineer, I like to examine the data. The following shows the percentage of US population living in the state of Michigan. I got all of my data from the U.S. Census Bureau.

  • 1970: 4.34%
  • 1980: 4.09%
  • 1990: 3.74%
  • 2000: 3.53%
  • 2006: 3.37%

Now let’s look at the all important category of ages 20-29. These are the entrepreneurs, the new home buyers, the wealth builders, and the individuals that will create the future jobs. Look at the same numbers by that age group:

  • 1970: 4.20% (96.8%)
  • 1980: 4.21% (102.9%)
  • 1990: 3.63% (97.1%)
  • 2000: 3.39% (96.0%)
  • 2006: 3.21% (95.3%)

The second number is the percentage of 20-29 divided by the total percentage. Anything over 100% is good. The further below 100% the more relative percentage of 20-29 years olds you are losing. You can see the trend is getting alarmingly worse. Tons of talented kids that are getting educated by the great Michigan Schools (Kettering, Michigan Tech, yes and even U of M) are leaving this state.

What can be done?

Well, I am not going to pretend that I have the answer, because I don’t. What I do have though is an opinion:

I feel that raising taxes on services as our Governor has recently proposed is not the answer. Michigan is competing with every other state in the union for 21st century jobs. Taxing services only drives young entrepreneurs out of this state faster. I also feel that the big 3 are not going to lead a turn around. They are losing market share just like the state.

Being an engineer, I would like to think that technology could really be the key to turning around this state. The key technology that will drive jobs and spur growth in the next generation is energy (especially concentrated on alternate forms). There are some great engineering schools in this state. Anything that the state can do to foster these kids to go get high tech engineering degrees and foster business and entrepreneurial pursuits in this field would help redefine the great state of Michigan for the 21st century.