[November 20, 2009] Economists see 2 more years of Michigan job losses Tweet Nov 20, 2009 (Detroit Free Press - McClatchy-Tribune Information Services via COMTEX) -- Michigan faces two more years of job losses before seeing a modest recovery in its labor markets in late 2011, but the worst is over and those future losses will moderate each year. That's the forecast this morning from University of Michigan economists, who delivered their authoritative and widely watched annual outlook at U-M in Ann Arbor. The good news: Michigan's job losses will moderate in 2010 and 2011 as the recovery nears. This year, the state will lose an estimated 283,000 jobs, but the losses will moderate to 85,000 in 2010 and 36,000 in 2011. "In Michigan, prolonged difficulties have become a way of life," U-M economist George Fulton said. "But the Michigan economy is in a more encouraging position now than it was at the beginning of 2009." Fulton and his colleagues Joan Crary and Donald Grimes predict the state's unemployment rate will average 15.6% in the final three months of this year, then drift up to average 15.8% in 2010 -- the highest state rate in at least 40 years. The rate will remain above 15% in 2011, although moderating somewhat. Michigan's October rate was 15.1%. Fulton is director of U-M's Research Seminar in Quantitative Economics. By the time Michigan's labor markets finally recover in late 2011 and into 2012, the state will have lost jobs for 11 years in a row, after averaging 58,000 new jobs a year for the previous 30 years. During this 11-year stretch of job losses, Michigan will have shed an estimated 937,000 jobs, or nearly one in five jobs that existed at the beginning of the period. The conference wrapped up this morning with a presentation by Timothy Bartik, senior economist for the W. E. Upjohn Institute for Employment Research in Kalamazoo. Bartik offered several suggestions for boosting Michigan's economy. They included mandatory summer school for elementary school students, pre-kindergarten training for most 4-year-olds, and increasing the number of career academies tied to specific companies or industries. To sum up the conference, Fulton told the audience, "We need to do something, and let's get on with it." Contact JOHN GALLAGHER: 313-222-5173 or [email protected]. To see more of the Detroit Free Press, or to subscribe to the newspaper, go to http://www.freep.com Copyright (c) 2009, Detroit Free Press Distributed by McClatchy-Tribune Information Services. For reprints, email [email protected], call 800-374-7985 or 847-635-6550, send a fax to 847-635-6968, or write to The Permissions Group Inc., 1247 Milwaukee Ave., Suite 303, Glenview, IL 60025, USA. [ Back To TMCnet.com's Homepage ]