Posted on 10/24/2009 6:30:01 PM PDT by Son House
The September unemployment stats for Michigan came out this week and they are high — as expected.
Mlive.com highlighted the statistics on a municipal level, showing the five cities with the highest jobless rates are all over 25 percent. The cities of Highland Park and Pontiac, which leaned heavily on auto-related employment, had the highest unemployment with 35.2 percent of residents reportedly jobless. Both cities have declared bankruptcy in the recent past. Highland Park recently emerged from state receivership and Pontiac just slipped under state control last year.
While the overall state’s unemployment rate is the highest in the nation at 15.3 percent, the top five hardest hit cities in the state are all former automobile production hubs.
According to Mlive.com:
1.Highland Park 35.2% 1. Pontiac 35.2% 3. Detroit 27.9% 4. Flint 26.3% 5. Port Huron 25.7%
What do these statistics mean for residents in these cities? Many are packing up and heading out of state to find work, like one Detroiter who went as far as creating a website and a PayPal account seeking donations to help him leave the city.
The former Detroiter wrote on his “Help me leave Detroit” page, which features photos of crime and drug houses in his neighborhood:
“I live in Detroit. I am a skilled pipefitter, yet I am unemployed. Detroit’s unemployment rate is at a record 28.7 percent. 1/3 of Detroiters live at or below the poverty line. Crime is rampant. My house has been burglarized 9 times. My car window was bust by a thief who I caught breaking into the house down the street.
The blogging plumber is not alone. In April the Detroit News reported that every 12 minutes Michigan loses a family seeking work. The article noted that approximately 109,000 more people left Michigan in 2008 than moved in.
This state exodus is not helping the situation any. Detroit News’ Ron French writes:
“The families who are leaving — young, well-educated high-income earners — are the people the state desperately needs to rebuild.
http://www.time.com/time/magazine/article/0,9171,1931750,00.html
The median sale price of homes in Detroit has plunged from $59,700 in August 2005 to $8,000 just two months ago.
I wonder if the 2010 census will result
in Michigan losing some House seats...
___________________________
Depends on who does the counting.
87k people can’t be that hard to find?
http://www.jewishvirtuallibrary.org/jsource/US-Israel/usjewpop.html
Youth face uphill struggle amid Detroit’s troubles
http://www.google.com/hostednews/ap/article/ALeqM5ggwJmBwTB9LR-UQjgR2KUXZ3ZdFQD9BCURQO2
About 32 percent of the city’s 900,000 residents struggle in poverty as Detroit limps through the auto industry’s collapse. Factory and manufacturing jobs are gone.
Roughly one in four working-age adults is jobless. The situation is more dire for 16- to 19-year-olds in Detroit who face an unemployment rate of 57.4 percent, according to the state Department of Energy, Labor and Economic Growth, citing last year’s U.S. Census figures.
Funny, this is almost the same article with the same statistics that DetNews.com posted back in April. Wonder how bad it REALLY is, now that HopeAndChange has set in?
OTOH, I live in New York City...
http://www.detnews.com/article/20091014/METRO01/910140370/Insurers-declare-war-on-arsons-in-Detroit
Arson cases soar
Stopping the arson will be no easy task.
There were 6,486 arsons investigated by the Detroit Fire Department’s Arson Squad in 2008. That is a 27.8 percent increase over the squad’s 5,074 cases in 2004, said Gery Victor, the squad’s chief. In addition, arson-related insurance fraud in Detroit is up roughly 40 percent from 2005 to 2008, he said.
There were about 101,000 vacant housing units in Detroit in 2008, more than double the number in 2000, according to the U.S. Census Bureau.
After the Sunday arson spike, officials said they are particularly concerned about Angels’ and Halloween nights, which had high levels of arsons in the 1980s. City officials are already requesting patrol volunteers.
In 1984, fires on the day before Halloween, for years known as Devil’s Night, peaked when 810 fires were set within a three-day period.
As the city has been plagued with foreclosures and an unemployment rate above 28 percent, fire officials have said that some despairing owners are risking prison to get out of debt, and vacant, foreclosed homes are being torched.
Sad. “Made in America” still means something to me. I’m sorry that’s not the case for a lot of people.
Yet all those OKies and blacks moved in during the 20s to 50s with the union following. No one was complaining in 1953 about the political leadership or unionism.
Gosh, and Jeff Daniels almost had me convinced to move my business to Michigan.
It’s too bad Texas is already full up.
Socialism loses every time.
“It’s too bad Texas is already full up.”
Very completely full up. Now if we could just get the Katrina crowd to leave...I’ve got it! Let’s send them to Michigan to help Michigan keep its House seats.
Yep, I’m kinda thinking that because this year Halloween falls on a Saturday, they are going to need all kinds of security because of that good ‘ol Detroit tradition of Devil’s Night(now called Angels’?). I’ll throw 110% of the blame of this year on the 111th Congress and their non-Stimulus bill, I think Rush mention how folks are really feeling down and out will really be a factor
=>
also got a good economic read that should help prepare you for next weeks GDP numbers, here’s the short of it if it interest you;
Macroeconomic Analysis
http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/2369929/posts
Macroeconomic analysis broadly focuses on three things:
National Output: GDP
Output, the most important concept of macroeconomics, refers to the total amount of goods and services a country produces
Unemployment
The unemployment rate tells macroeconomists how many people from the available pool of labor (the labor force) are unable to find work.
Inflation
The third main factor that macroeconomists look at is the inflation rate, or the rate at which prices rise.
Detroit’s Infamous ‘Devils’ Night’ Comes Early
Eleven houses burned within 90 minutes on Oct. 11
http://www.mlive.com/news/detroit/index.ssf/2009/10/detroit_braces_for_devils_nigh.html
The stakes are even higher this year, as the city already devastated by the exodus of jobs and unemployment of around 27 percent moves toward the Halloween weekend. Along with tens of thousands of long-vacant homes and buildings, the more than 40,000 others recently emptied by the foreclosure crisis could present tempting targets.
As far as the economy goes zero is doing everything he can to destroy any hope of a recovery,its in his interest to have chaos all the time. That's where we are and probably will be until his term is up.
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