Michigan’s Unemployment Percentage Worse Than Last Year

While unemployment rates have dropped steadily since the pandemic, not every state is trending in the right direction. For a variety of reasons, there remains a certain percentage of the country that has still had difficulty getting back to work.

That struggle certainly extends into Michigan. While businesses seem to have little trouble filling the positions they have available according to one study, another indicates that there very well could not be enough jobs.

While in most cases any job is better than no job, the fact that the price of nearly everything has risen to an unbearable amount, making it impossible to survive on the federal minimum wage alone, Michigan's minimum wage of $10.10, or even what has somewhat become the defacto minimum wage these days of $15. Though economics is rarely so black and white, it's understandable if higher wages for workers mean fewer jobs, as the cost of goods impacts employers just as much as the public.

A recent study from WalletHub looked at each state's unemployment rate and compared it to last week, last year and Michigan did not perform well.

Overall, Michigan was ranked as the 43rd worst state when factoring in all of the metrics accounted for in the study. Michigan saw a 32.17% increase in unemployment claims in the week prior to the study (the week of October 23, 2023) which was the 46th-worst in the country. Also 46th-worst was Michigan's increase in unemployment rates from October 24, 2022, to October 23, 2023, at 58.04%.

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The one bright spot was the overall number of unemployment claims drastically went down. Michigan saw a 22.09% decrease in cumulative unemployment claims from 2022 to 2023, the seventh-best in the country. However, the unemployment per 100,000 people in the labor force was another big loss, as Michigan's 181 claims per 100,000 ranked 47th in the country.

The entire study from WalletHub is available here.