Mackinac Island — Michigan is failing to retain a key talent pool among college graduates as the state’s automotive industry reaches an “inflection point” that requires Michigan to shift its focus from production-related careers to knowledge, professional or creative occupations, according to a study released Wednesday at the Mackinac Policy Conference.
A crucial sector needed to expand Michigan’s autonomous and electric vehicle future — computer scientists, electrical engineers and chemical engineers — is leaving the state for other locations, according to the report by Richard Florida, an urban researcher and founder of Creative Class Group.
Production work is no longer the “family-supporting” career it once was and Michigan’s future lies in “more highly paid knowledge work,” the report said. But the state is stuck with a “job base and a workforce that is over-concentrated in production and under-concentrated in knowledge work.”
“There’s a pivot from the internal combustion engine to these new technologies of electrification, sustainability of the car being a digital vehicle powered by software,” Florida told business leaders and lawmakers Wednesday at the Detroit Regional Chamber’s annual policy conference on Mackinac Island.
The question remains, Florida added, “how Michigan can compete and win.”
The study came as the state increasingly focuses on ways to address population loss, especially among young people needed to retain Michigan’s place in a changing automotive industry.
Gov. Gretchen Whitmer on Thursday announced the formation of a state task force focused on studying population loss within the state and ways to reverse the trends. The proposal was panned by Republicans, with many noting population decline has been a long known problem that needs real action, not another commission.
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Whitmer also announced plans on Wednesday to align under one umbrella economic development efforts, talent attraction and retention and placemaking in an initiative called Make it in Michigan. The three prongs mirror the three pillars Florida encouraged the state to focus on in his report: transformational technology or startups, talent and placemaking.
A poll conducted earlier this month by Glengariff group and commissioned by the Detroit Regional Chamber found residents largely were optimistic about Michigan’s future and the majority saw themselves living in Michigan 10 years from now.
But the numbers, when broken down by demographics, painted a more ominous picture.
Nearly half of the young adults and Black voters surveyed think they may leave Michigan or aren’t certain about their continued residency over the next 10 years. The poll of 600 Michigan voters surveyed May 7-10 had a margin of error of plus or minus four percentage points. The margin of error increases when broken down by demographics.
State Demographer Jaclyn Butler told lawmakers earlier this month that Michigan’s population grew by 2% between 2010 and 2020, the 46th slowest of 47 states that experienced population growth during that decade. Michigan was among 19 states that experienced population decline between 2020 and 2022.
“Even in a population forecast with a net positive migration scenario — where there’s enough international migration to offset domestic loss in most years — the share of people in prime working age years is projected to remain flat,” Butler said. “By comparison, we’re seeing that younger population is projected to decrease while the share of the older population is projected to increase.”
Florida on Wednesday, while warning about lags in key careers, offered something of a silver lining when it came to the overall picture of Michigan’s talent retention.
In the report, Florida sought to dispel the “myth” that Michigan was failing to retain talent at large. Michigan ranks seventh for the percentage of college and university graduates who stay in the state, and the greater Detroit area has the highest retention rate of metro regions in the nation for two- and four-year college graduates.
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Additionally, Michigan universities are a large source of top talent, with UM, Michigan State University and Wayne State University producing more college graduates than other similar university clusters such as Boston-Cambridge or the San Francisco Bay Area.
But only 32% of Michigan residents over the age of 25 have a bachelor’s degree, a number that ranks the state 31st of 50 for the percentage of bachelor’s degrees. And a key group of graduates needed to pivot Michigan’s industry to autonomous and electric vehicles are leaving.
Just 28% of the University of Michigan’s graduates in mathematics and statistics are working in the state five years after graduation, 36% of those in engineering and 25% in computer-related majors — about 36% of UM graduates with computer-related majors are working on the West Coast, the study said.
Overall, just one-third of UM’s undergraduates are working in the state five years after graduation.
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Florida argued in his report Wednesday that in order to attract more talent Michigan must seek to attract international talent and retain the students educated at its universities. It also must seek to convert college towns like Ann Arbor and East Lansing from simply places of learning to “full contributors to the state’s technological and economic transformation.”
“In other words, they must become tech hubs and talent magnets in their own right,” the report said.
eleblanc@detroitnews.com