Despite the drop in the national unemployment rate reported by the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics earlier this month, the state of Michigan saw an increase in the number of jobless claims.
The national unemployment rate fell to 7.3 percent from 7.4 percent, and the state unemployment rate rose from 8.7 percent to 8.8 percent.
Michigan has continued to be on the upper end of the spectrum in terms of unemployment despite the fact that it has added thousands of jobs since the financial crisis of 2007. According to the Economic Policy Center, 39 states saw increases in employment from April to July 2013. California added an estimated 51,300 jobs, Georgia added 43,000, and Michigan added 39,600.
And within the same timeframe, unemployment declined in 21 states, rose in 27 states and the District of Columbia, and remained unaltered in Maine (6.9 percent) and North Carolina (8.9 percent).
Nevada has continued to have the highest unemployment rate throughout the economic downturn at 9.5 percent. Illinois has the second highest at 9.2 percent. The Dakotas have maintained uncharacteristically low unemployment rates due to a boom in natural resource discovery and extraction.
The state showed promise in 2010 when the unemployment rate fell from 13.8 percent as reported in January 2010 to 11.3 percent in December 2010 – a dramatic decrease. Then in 2011, the TechAmerica Foundation reported from its survey of the states that Michigan added more high-technology jobs than any other state between 2009 and 2010.
“The largest gains occurred in Michigan ( 2,700), the District of Columbia ( 1,400), West Virginia ( 400), Utah ( 400), and South Carolina ( 300),” according to a summary of the report. “On a percentage basis, the District of Columbia saw the fastest job growth in 2010 at 4.3 percent, albeit at a small base.”
With these increases and an expansion of the American auto industry, the state has seen more and more jobless claims.
The 2014 election date is more than a year away, but the rise in the state’s unemployment rate does not bode well for Gov. Rick Snyder, a Republican, who ran for his first term as a savvy businessman who could create jobs.
Over his tenure, Gov. Snyder has cut taxes on businesses, visited Asia in an attempt to expand on international trade and attempted to fund infrastructure improvements in order to spur economic development.
Now the efficancy of his efforts, as well as the efforts of the Obama administration that bailed out the auto industry in 2009, has been called into reasonable doubt.
The rise in unemployment could have also been caused by an increase in the number of job applicants rather than a downgrade in the state’s economic conditions.
