Howes: Rebound in autos, economy buoys sentiment in MI - The Detroit News
The last time Charles Ballard’s State of the State survey found so much enthusiasm over Michigan’s economy, John Engler was governor, Bill Clinton was president and Detroit’s automakers were minting money. In between came the Great Recession and epic reckonings that buried for good post-war economic expectations birthed in the affluent 1950s and ’60s, a rigid template ill-suited to parrying foreign competition and changing market dynamics. Two of Detroit’s three automakers collapsed into federally induced Chapter 11. The state lost nearly 1 million jobs. In response, pragmatic political leaders are combining with new civic and business leadership, and reinvestment in Detroit, to redirect the economic arc of the state. In Michigan State’s spring survey, released Wednesday, 60 percent of the respondents rated their financial situation as good or excellent, and 66 percent predicted things would be even better next year — the most positive such sentiment since... The next decade traced a downward spiral that claimed jobs, plants and expectations of entitlement, culminating in a searing recession here. Michigan created 450,000 jobs in the following rebound and made meaningful strides in diversifying its economy. but employment still is roughly 400,000 jobs below total jobs in 2000. Hardest hit is the bottom half of the income distribution, Ballard said. Source: www.detroitnews.com
