Magic Pot of Jobs

The national recession has been particularly unkind to Michigan’s job situation. With the economy struggling, the auto industry has seen sales drastically decline. This has severely affected the state that relied heavily on this sector to provide jobs.

According to the most recent data from the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics, Michigan’s unemployment rate jumped over a percent during June. Last month joblessness rose 1.1 percent, going from May’s 14.1 percent to 15.2 percent. This is the highest the state’s unemployment rate has been in 26 years.

Currently the state has the highest unemployment rate in the country.

During June the national jobless rate rose to 9.5 percent, which means that Michigan is much worse than most of the country. The state’s unemployment rate is also significantly higher than it was during the same month last year. In June of 2008 only 8.1 percent of Michigan residents were collecting jobless benefits.

According to the Michigan Department of Energy, Labor, and Economic Growth, 740,000 people in the state are out of work. This is the largest number of jobless workers the state has seen since 1976.

During June approximately 19,000 jobs were lost in the manufacturing sector. Another 10,000 positions were cut in the professional and business services industry. On top of this the construction sector lost another 5,000 positions.

Considering the drastic number of jobs lost, the 5,000 government jobs created during the month had no chance of making a dent in the state’s losses.

Over the course of the last year several industries in the state have seen year-over-year losses in excess of 10 percent. The largest decline was experienced by the manufacturing sector, where jobs have fallen by 25.9 percent in the last 12 months. Employers in the construction sector also cut 18.4 percent and the professional and business services industry have seen a decline of 12.3 percent.

Only one industry in Michigan has reported any year-over-year job gains whatsoever; educational and healthcare services. This sector now has 0.8 percent more employees on the payroll than it did in June of 2008.

Tags: Job Search, Michigan jobs

This entry was posted on Sunday, July 26th, 2009 at 7:05 pm and is filed under Job Search. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.