Michigan’s unemployment rate edged higher in February by one-tenth of a percentage point to 5.4%, following a months-long pattern of inching up or remaining flat.
The jobs report was released Thursday by the Michigan Department of Technology, Management and Budget.
The state’s jobless rate remains higher than the national average of 4.1%.
One reason the rate went up is people joining the workforce in search of jobs. Manufacturing in Michigan gained jobs in February following four months of declining employment.
Michigan Labor Market Information Director Wayne Rourke said many factory workers returned from temporary layoffs last month, which mitigated manufacturing job losses going back to last year. But weak demand for new vehicles is still driving some manufacturing workforce reductions.
“So what we’re seeing now is in sectors such as manufacturing and professional and business services, those are still our weakest sectors over the past year or so,” Rourke told Michigan Public Radio. “Our retail trade has also been declining since last year. That’s not really a surprise due to all the news we’ve seen.”
The state’s employment picture is complex with a lot of uncertainty on the horizon due to nascent trade wars with Canada, Mexico and Europe as manufacturing is already struggling. It is still too early to tell exactly how that will affect jobs and the economy.
“Now and going forward, there’s turmoil at our border with Canada because of President Trump’s policies,” said Charles Ballard, Michigan State University economics professor emeritus. “I’m not sure how it’s going to work out. It doesn’t look great to me, but we’ll see.”
Ballard said Michigan is also more vulnerable than much of the country to boom-and-bust cycles because the workforce has fewer people with college degrees.
“You look at the places that are more prosperous, they tend to have a lot of people with a bachelor’s degree or more,” he said. “And, for better or worse, and I think it’s unfortunate, Michigan has lagged behind the national average in terms of educational attainment for a very long time.”
