Policy experts ask Michigan to strengthen workers rights as state grapples with economic challenges

Filed 51m ago · Via Michigan Advance · The Buffoon Desk

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Kevin MacLeod · incompetech.com · CC BY 4.0

Photo: via Wikimedia Commons · Public domain · via Wikimedia Commons

The Michigan League for Public Policy released a Labor Day report finding the state's labor underutilization rate at 9.1%, above the 7.9% national average, with labor force participation dropping 1.7%, the steepest decline since the pandemic. Analyst Patrick Schaefer attributes the slide to retirements, extended schooling, job-search fatigue, and childcare costs that now run $14,064 a year for full-time infant care.

The report found the median Michigan wage up just 8 cents since 2024, leaving workers only 19 cents ahead of pre-pandemic pay, while Black workers' median wage fell 43 cents and women's fell 16 cents over the same year. It also compared OpenAI's Saline Township data center, projected at 450 permanent jobs, against Ford's Michigan Assembly Plant, which employs more than 6,000.

The League's recommendations include raising the $13.73 minimum wage, eliminating the sub-minimum tipped wage of $5.49 an hour, banning salary-history questions in hiring, and redirecting incentive money toward education, infrastructure, and childcare instead of chasing tech and data-center investment.

The full dispatch is available from the source below.

✒ FROM THE EDITORIAL DESK

A state can call a number stable all it wants, but a 43-cent pay cut for Black workers and a $14,000 childcare bill don't care what you call them. Chasing a data center that promises 450 jobs while an assembly plant down the road already employs 6,000 is the kind of trade a person makes when the salesman does all the talking. The report reads like somebody finally turned the porch light on and found out how many things had been chewing through the wiring the whole time.

Source: Read the original at Michigan Advance → Scored: At Rest · Kevin MacLeod · CC BY 4.0

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