University of Michigan economists expect higher job growth in Michigan next year, led by manufacturing and the trade
, transportation and utilities sector.
“We do see some pickup in the economy going into 2013 and continuing through 2014,” George Fulton, an economist at the university’s Research Seminar in Quantitative Economics, wrote in a recently released economic forecast.
He and other economists at the university expect Michigan’s economy to add 45,900 jobs this year, followed by 50,800 new positions in 2013 and 63,100 jobs in 2014. Last year, the state gained 63,800 jobs.
Even with this job growth, Michigan still has a long way to go to recoup the hundreds of thousands of jobs lost during the last decade. By the end of 2014, the state will only have regained a third of the jobs it lost from mid-2000 to the end of 2009.
This year, job growth in the state sizzled in the first quarter and then cooled off, a pattern that also occurred in 2011. For the last nine months of this year, the economists are forecasting that the state’s job growth will average one-half of a percentage point.
The economists described the state’s recovery as “moderately paced but sustained.”
Katherine Yung, Detroit Free Press
