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Economy recovering but much work remains to be done

Michigan’s recovery from the Great Recession of 2008-10 continues, a panel of economists and other officials said Monday, but things are starting to slow up a bit, especially in the area of jobs creation.

“Moderation in the pace of job growth was bound to come at some time as the state’s job market got tighter,” Gabe Ehrlich, director of the Research Seminar in Quantitative Economics at the University of Michigan, told the bi-annual gathering of the Consensus Revenue Estimating Conference.

Michigan added roughly 44,000 jobs in 2017, which was the lowest annual rate since the start of the recovery that began in late 2009, he said.

In addition, he predicted that, going forward, incomes should rise across the state.

Ehrlich’s comments appeared in editions of The Detroit News.

In the Upper Peninsula, where the jobless rate has often lagged, historically speaking, behind much of the rest of the state, Ehrlich’s comments must have come as something of a salving balm.

In Marquette County, the Empire Mine closed in the past 18 months with hundreds of miners losing their jobs. Other areas of the U.P. are similarly stressed.

We’re pleased the economy is doing relatively well, statewide, and indications suggest income levels will start to increase.

But we continue to be concerned about what’s happening in our own backyard. A lot of people remain under employed or unemployed in the region and we don’t hear a lot from Lansing relative to jobs creation here.

In our opinion, less time needs to be set aside for partisan bickering and more time dedicated to putting people back to work.

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