The man in charge of charting population trends for Michigan says he would not be surprised to see the out-migration of people from the state reverse course.
The new U.S. Census data says Michigan lost people over the last decade.
State Demographer Ken Darga says Michiganders left the state in droves over the past decade for places like Florida where jobs were more plentiful. Now, Darga says, they may be ready to come back -- Florida’s jobless rate is higher than Michigan’s.
Darga discussed the good news on the Michigan public TV show “Off The Record.”
“The economy is starting to turn around. There’s a lot of good news about Michigan’s economy in the past year or so.”
“Michigan has lost a lot of young people to Florida – as well as senior citizens – because Florida used to be one of the big states that had low unemployment and it was a place you could go to find a job while Michigan was in a one-state recession. But now, Florida’s unemployment rate is higher than Michigan’s.”
“One of the things I’ll be looking for is to see if some of those Michigan natives who moved to Florida are going to start coming back.”
The U-S Bureau of Labor Statistics says Michigan added 71 thousand more jobs than it lost in the past 12 months and its unemployment rate fell more than any other state’s.
Also, the decline in Michigan’s jobless rate for the first two months of 2011 was due to more people working, and not to discouraged jobseekers checking out of the workforce.
Michigan and Kentucky are tied for the nation’s fifth highest unemployment rate.
