Tagged: unemployment rate

Michigan's unemployment rate for May 2013 remained unchanged from the previous month - 8.4%. If you compare it to May 2012, the rate is down - the unemployment rate in May 2012 was 9.2%.

After the Great Recession, the unemployment rate in Michigan began to drop from its high of more than 14% in 2009, but so did the number of people in the overall "workforce" in the state. The workforce, or the total number of people both working or actively looking for work, has only increased slightly in recent months.

This month, the workforce grew by 28,000.

Buena Vista schools to reopen

Students in the Buena Vista school district will soon be heading back to the classroom. 

“The state Department of Education has approved the Buena Vista school district’s deficit elimination plan. The state will resume making aid payments, and school is expected to begin again next week for about 400 students,” Rick Pluta reports.

Unemployment rate falls and workforce grows

Michigan’s jobless rate continued to fall as 19,000 people found jobs last month, bringing the unemployment rate to 8.4% in April. The biggest gains were in the leisure, manufacturing, and health services industries while professional and business services declined. The size of the state’s workforce also grew by 2,000 people over the past year.

Department of Civil Rights faces budget cuts over mascot complaint

“The Michigan Department of Civil Rights could see its budget cut by $3 million over its stance on American Indian-themed school mascots. The department recently filed a complaint with the federal government over the mascots … Lawmakers in the state House have introduced a bill that would take money from the department and put it into a fund to help schools pay for any mascot changes,” Jake Neher reports.

Michigan’s unemployment rate declined by one tenth of one percentage point last month.

Michigan’s April unemployment rate was 8.4%, down seven tenths of a percentage point from April of 2012. The state’s jobless rate has been on the decline since last September.

The biggest gains last month were found in the leisure, manufacturing and health services industries, while professional and business services posted a big decline.

And the state’s latest labor numbers are not just about people with jobs.

Michigan's unemployment rate dipped for the second month in a row to 8.5 percent.

The unemployment rate represents those in the labor force who do not have jobs.

People are counted as part of the labor force if they looked for a job - even once - during the four weeks prior to the BLS' giant phone survey.

We like to chart unemployment along with the overall labor force numbers to give you a clearer picture of what's going on in the state.

As our chart shows below, the overall labor force in Michigan dropped dramatically starting in 2007. Even though the unemployment rate has been dropping over the last 3+ years, the labor force only recently starting ticking upward.

MPRN's Rick Pluta has more on the numbers:

The drop in the monthly jobless rate was actually a change from recent history because it is due to 17,000 more people being added to payrolls, and not because people were leaving the workforce and no
longer competing for jobs.

Most of the job gains in March were in temporary help, and business services like IT and accounting. There were some job losses in the volatile retail and construction sectors.

And this is from the Michigan Department of Technology, Management & Budget's press release:

"Overall, Michigan’s labor market situation in early 2013 has been positive,” said Michael Williams, acting director of the Bureau of Labor Market Information and Strategic Initiatives. “The state’s unemployment rate in March was the lowest recorded since mid-2008, and payroll jobs this year
are the highest since the fourth quarter of 2008."

(If you want more numbers to digest, there are a whole lot more in the press release above.)

LANSING, Mich. (AP) - The head of Michigan's Unemployment Insurance Agency is defending his agency's decision to not attend some insurance fraud hearings in light of staffing cuts.

Steve Arwood was called to testify in front of the Senate Appropriations Subcommittee on Licensing and Regulatory Affairs Thursday.

Arwood was asked to address a report in the Detroit Free Press on Sunday that said the agency instructed officials to only show up at administrative fraud hearings if the amount is at least $15,000.

Arwood says last October the agency was forced to cut staff from 1,200 to 800 employees, including 20 people whose primary responsibility was to attend hearings.

In 2011, lawmakers passed legislation to reduce the threshold for a felony charge for unemployment insurance fraud from $25,000 to $3,500.

Michigan’s employment picture brightened a bit in February.

The Michigan Department of Technology, Management & Budget says the state’s jobless rate dipped slightly in February, down one tenth of one percent, to 8.8%.   Michigan's unemployment rate has been declining since last August. 

In real numbers, total employment increased by 15,000 jobs over the month while the number of unemployed declined slightly by 3,000.

Michigan stands to lose thousands of jobs if automatic federal budget cuts take effect at the end of the month.

The effects could ripple through the state’s economy.

Stephen Fuller, an economist at George Mason University, has broken down the effects of the $85 billion in federal spending cuts that will go into effect if the so-called sequestration goes through next week.

He estimates Michigan will lose 23,000 to 25,000 jobs, mostly defense department related, but also about 10,000 non-governmental jobs.

That’s slightly lower than the more than 30,000 jobs lost he predicted last year, but he says the effect on Michigan’s economy will still be more than $2 billion.

Fuller says small businesses will feel the effect more than large businesses.

“They have a harder time adjusting…they don’t have stockholders or large deposits in the bank to live off of,” said Fuller.

Fuller says government workers will probably start to feel the budget cuts in April, but a Lansing area defense contractor has already announced layoffs tied to the looming sequestration.

Michigan’s unemployment rate held steady through the month of December at 8.9 percent, according to a report released today by the Michigan Department of Technology, Management & Budget (DTMB).

The December rate marks a four-tenths of a percent decrease from last year, while the national jobless rate dropped by seven-tenths of a percent over the same period.

Total employment declined by 11,000 last month.