Patrick Schaefer

Michigan has always been a working-class state, and much of our story can be told in terms of labor, business, and economics. Today, Michigan is at a crossroads. The auto industry is not what it was, unions are weaker, the top 10% is wealthier, inequality among class, race and gender persists, and uncertainty is in the air.

The decisions we make now will have a lasting impact on our future. All that is certain is that things are not what they used to be. Last week, the Michigan League for Public Policy released its Labor Day Snapshot, a look at the state of Michigan’s workforce. As of July 2025, preliminary reporting indicates Michigan has the fourth-highest unemployment rate in the country at 5.3%. While this is not cause for alarm just yet, and is still considered to be in the “healthy” range for many economists, Michigan’s unemployment has been outpacing the national average since early 2024, a far cry from the golden age of American manufacturing.

The state average unemployment obscures the employment woes of rural Michigan. Sixty counties in the state, including Alpena, have unemployment rates at or above 6%, and some rural counties have rates much higher. Oscoda County, for one, has an unemployment rate of 11.4% as of July 2025. This unemployment does not stem from people not wanting to work. There are simply not enough jobs. As of April this year, the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics reported there were 1.3 unemployed persons for every 1 job opening in the state, meaning if every unemployed person somehow lived near a job they qualified for, there would still not be enough jobs for everyone, let alone good-paying jobs that provided ample benefits.

While Michigan’s economy has begun to slow, some industries are seeing a growing demand. Between 2019 and 2024, the construction industry grew by 13%. However, those in the industry warn of a growing labor shortage, with many construction workers soon eligible for retirement. Likewise, the child care industry is seeing a growing demand for services, yet 55% of Michigan ZIP codes are labeled as child care deserts, and 77% of these deserts are in rural communities or towns.

In 2024, 3.9% of Michiganders were working part-time but wanted to work full-time or had become discouraged from looking for work. While the state government has a limited ability to simply create more jobs, we can encourage our leaders to promote policies that incentivize employment in certain sectors. But even then, we also need policies that remove barriers to employment and better connect people to existing jobs.

For the child care industry, we could increase the child care scholarship reimbursement rate. By changing how we establish reimbursement rates, we could encourage providers to accept more children with these scholarships. Beyond removing barriers to accessing child care, this would also put more money in licensed providers’ pockets, allowing them to increase pay for their workers. In 2024, a child care worker’s median hourly wage was only $14.08 per hour, $9.14 less than Michigan’s median wage. This type of incentivization could drive more to pursue careers in child care while simultaneously increasing access and freeing up other parents to return to work in other fields.

On the other hand, the construction industry can often be perceived as difficult manual labor with unpredictable hours. Beyond public perception, anti-labor policies emerged from the Legislature in the early 2010s that further limited construction workers’ rights to collectively negotiate the terms of their employment on state projects and prevented local governments from setting their own higher benefit standards. Why work in a field where you are expected to perform manual labor but not allowed to negotiate your hours or pay when large state contracts are involved? Eliminating these laws would allow builders to better negotiate pay and allow local governments to set labor standards to incentivize working in their communities and in the construction industry overall.

It’s clear the labor situation in Michigan is complex. Beyond industry-specific fixes, we could invest in transportation to ensure people can get to work. While public transit is often seen as an urban issue, the high cost of car ownership impacts rural communities just as much, and jobs are often even further away. Simultaneously, connecting Michiganders to training programs and apprenticeships could help them meet job requirements and fill demand for trade laborers.

The economy is not what it used to be. However, if we remove barriers to employment and training and promote pro-worker policies, we can forge a new chapter for Michigan’s workforce.