The Michigan Job Market

I’ve been monitoring the job market here in Michigan lately, and things aren’t good. There’s a reason that Michigan college graduates are leaving the state at alarming rates: there aren’t any jobs here for them.

Searching on Indeed and Craigslist, most of the jobs available in Michigan are entry level non-degree positions, or factory jobs. What few other jobs remain are currently well aware of the competition and using it to exploit applicants.

I saw one for a marketing director that required a masters degree yet was paying $38,000. In some of my previous companies, the “director” title meant a 6-figure salary to go with it.

I’ve seen PHP programmer jobs being offered at hourly rates less than what I’ve paid companies in India to develop websites. There’s so many programmers out of work that some are willing to take $10/hour jobs writing code. I’ve always been pretty anti union, but those views might be soon changing.

I know part of it is the auto-related dominance of our economy here. Whereas “product manager” implies thoughts of having a team of programmers out west, it means overseeing production of tractor tires in Detroit.

Let’s get with it Michigan. We need to start attracting some higher tech companies here. I’ve been working with a lot of start-ups lately, and they’re all in the valley or Seattle. I’ve seen a few on the east coast, but nothing good is coming out of Michigan – except our college graduates.

October 20th, 2008