Michigan Debates Future ED Focus

Here is a quote from a commentary article in the Detroit News this morning. It essentially says that Michigan should stop giving so much attention to manufacturing job retention.

"The steep decline in manufacturing jobs is Topic A in discussions about the future of Michigan’s economy. There is widespread concern that without robust manufacturing companies, our economy will be increasingly dominated by low-wage service-providing industries. Also, many people think the large loss of good-paying manufacturing jobs will depress the economy.

It turns out that these fears are greatly exaggerated, if not unwarranted. In our new report, “A New Path to Prosperity?,” we find that knowledge-based industries do better than manufacturing as an engine of economic growth. The knowledge-based jobs are in industries where work is largely done in offices, schools and hospitals."

What do you think? The easy out is to say "do both." That may be. How much of state and local resources should be committed to both? Should the the Big Three automakers continue to get the big handouts they have been receiving? This is a familiar debate in many places where I'm doing strategy work: Pennsylvania, Ohio, Indiana, and elsewhere.

Read the full article here and download the study by Donald Grimes and Lou Glazier here. Interesting debate shaping up in Michigan.