West Michigan/Grand Rapids Economy

[GRDadof3]

Grand Rapids MSA registered a 2.5% increase for year-over-year growth in non-farm payroll in November.

Total increase was: +14,100 new jobs from November 2017 - November 2018

Largest sector contributors:

Mining, logging and construction: +2300 (9.3% increase)

Education and Health Services: +2900 (3.1%)

Manufacturing: +2800 (2.4%)

Leisure and Hospitality: +3400 (7.1%)

Government: +2200 (4.5%)

Professional and Business Services, Information, and Financial Activities were all basically flat over last year. 

 

https://www.bls.gov/regions/midwest/mi_grandrapids_msa.htm#eag

[GRDadof3]

An article about Salt Lake City's housing crunch had a quote from someone on a city commission saying something like "If every household didn't have 6 kids we may not be having this issue." This statement is probably illegal discrimination on its face from a council member but it got me looking at demographics/pyschographics of births vs deaths in particular MSA's. 

Here goes. First number is births, second number is deaths.

Grand Rapids

2016:  13,511    7,705

2017:  13,548    7,674

Salt Lake City

2016:  18,474    6,794

2017:   18,460   6,827

Then the real fun analysis begins:

Pittsburgh: 

2016:     23,881   27,238

2017:     23,614   27,439

Cleveland:

2016:      22,887   21,269

2017:      22,873   21,068

Chicago:

2016:    117,443    71,672

2017:     115,915    72,491

Milwaukee: 

2016:   19,667   13,309

2017:   19,474     13,399

Toledo:

2016:    7,389   5,913

2017:   7,345   5,968

Tampa:

2016:   32,720     31,728

2017:    33,111     32,696

Rochester NY

2016:   11,398    9,679

2017:    11,310   9,766

 

Like, is anyone in the national media tracking this shit? 

[Pattmost20]

10 hours ago, GRDadof3 said:

An article about Salt Lake City's housing crunch had a quote from someone on a city commission saying something like "If every household didn't have 6 kids we may not be having this issue." This statement is probably illegal discrimination on its face from a council member but it got me looking at demographics/pyschographics of births vs deaths in particular MSA's. 

Here goes. First number is births, second number is deaths.

Grand Rapids

2016:  13,511    7,705

2017:  13,548    7,674

Salt Lake City

2016:  18,474    6,794

2017:   18,460   6,827

Then the real fun analysis begins:

Pittsburgh: 

2016:     23,881   27,238

2017:     23,614   27,439

Cleveland:

2016:      22,887   21,269

2017:      22,873   21,068

Chicago:

2016:    117,443    71,672

2017:     115,915    72,491

Milwaukee: 

2016:   19,667   13,309

2017:   19,474     13,399

Toledo:

2016:    7,389   5,913

2017:   7,345   5,968

Tampa:

2016:   32,720     31,728

2017:    33,111     32,696

Rochester NY

2016:   11,398    9,679

2017:    11,310   9,766

 

Like, is anyone in the national media tracking this crap? 

I think it is fascinating to look at the breakdown of births and deaths as it relates to population growth. States like California and New York are growing, yet have massive negative net domestic migration. Just the sheer number of people that already live there account for a massive number of births (combined with people living longer and lower death rates).

[arcturus]

Side note - just read where Toronto passed Chicago in population (not metro area).  Imagine migration is a factor.

Edited December 28, 2018 by arcturus

[walker]

Thought it might be helpful to add an additional column that shows the percentage of births to deaths.  Less than 100% means more people died than were born.   Other than the Mormon  tendency to have large families, I don't know what any of this means.  Maybe people in Pittsburgh stay put and don't move to Florida to die. 

   

[GRDadof3]

8 minutes ago, walker said:

Thought it might be helpful to add an additional column that shows the percentage of births to deaths.  Less than 100% means more people died than were born.   Other than the Mormon  tendency to have large families, I don't know what any of this means.  Maybe people in Pittsburgh stay put and don't move to Florida to die. 

   

Awesome, thanks! If you notice, Tampa and Pittsburgh are very similar. SLC is such a wild anomoly. I'm going to keep adding major metros to it.  Pittsburgh not even replacing its own people basically. 

Here's the source:

http://recenter.tamu.edu

[GRDadof3]

6 hours ago, walker said:

Thought it might be helpful to add an additional column that shows the percentage of births to deaths.  Less than 100% means more people died than were born.   Other than the Mormon  tendency to have large families, I don't know what any of this means.  Maybe people in Pittsburgh stay put and don't move to Florida to die. 

   

I'm guessing actually that the number of deaths as a percentage of an MSA's population is probably pretty standard across most metros. What probably varies a bunch is the number of births. Areas attracting a lot of young families probably have much higher birth rates compared to their death rates. 

I wish there were an easy way to cull that data.

[Pattmost20]

19 hours ago, GRDadof3 said:

I'm guessing actually that the number of deaths as a percentage of an MSA's population is probably pretty standard across most metros. What probably varies a bunch is the number of births. Areas attracting a lot of young families probably have much higher birth rates compared to their death rates. 

I wish there were an easy way to cull that data.

I would imagine if you look at average age by metro it would correlate to birth rate. Off the top of my head I know SLC has one of the lowest.

[GRDadof3]

4 hours ago, Pattmost20 said:

I would imagine if you look at average age by metro it would correlate to birth rate. Off the top of my head I know SLC has one of the lowest.

I kept digging through the data and most of the Northeastern States are about even births to deaths. Vermont was upside down (more deaths than births). 

[GRDadof3]

On 12/28/2018 at 10:49 AM, arcturus said:

Side note - just read where Toronto passed Chicago in population (not metro area).  Imagine migration is a factor.

Saw this post earlier and meant to comment. In 2016 - 2017 Toronto MSA grew by about 170,000 people. And about 1/2 of Toronto's population is now foreign-born. 

Only Dallas I believe had a growth spurt nearly that large, at 146,000 in one year (2016 - 2017)

Here are the top 23 in sheer number of people (not percentage). I don't really know how an area can handle a growth of even 50,000 in one year, not less 146,000. This is "growth," not migration, so it would include births.  Comparatively, the GR MSA grew by about 10,000 that year (1% growth)

 

[GRDadof3]

This certainly isn't going to help the housing situation.   Grand Rapids #2:

 

The 10 Surprising Housing Markets Poised to Rule in 2019

By Allison Underhill | Jan 2, 2019

https://www.realtor.com/news/trends/2019-housing-markets-poised-to-take-off/

 

[Guest]

2 hours ago, GRDadof3 said:

This certainly isn't going to help the housing situation.   Grand Rapids #2:

 

The 10 Surprising Housing Markets Poised to Rule in 2019

By Allison Underhill | Jan 2, 2019

https://www.realtor.com/news/trends/2019-housing-markets-poised-to-take-off/

 

Maybe some of the big builders will see this and add a little stock to the market

[GRDadof3]

14 hours ago, Floyd_Z said:

Maybe some of the big builders will see this and add a little stock to the market

There's a bunch of spec inventory on the market right now. Just take a look. Not a lot of existing homes though...

I just did a search and there are 272 new homes on the MLS right now in the Grand Rapids area (including lakeshore). That's actually not a lot, considering the size of our market. I know lenders are still a bit conservative about putting out too much money for spec inventory. A good thing in a way. 

[GRDadof3]

UHaul just came out with its ranking of "growth cities" based on the ratio of incoming and outgoing truck rentals:

U-Haul Growth Cities are calculated by the net gain of one-way U-Haul trucks entering a city versus leaving that city during a calendar year. Migration trends data is compiled from more than 2 million one-way U-Haul truck sharing transactions that occur annually.

Grand Rapids #5:

https://www.prnewswire.com/news-releases/u-haul-announces-top-25-us-growth-cities-for-2018-300772144.html

[GRDadof3]

What is it with all of these articles lately? 

https://www.cnbc.com/2018/12/12/popular-us-cities-where-you-can-buy-a-home-on-a-60000-dollar-salary.html

This article is true if you can FIND a good home at that price. 

[Pattmost20]

16 hours ago, GRDadof3 said:

What is it with all of these articles lately? 

https://www.cnbc.com/2018/12/12/popular-us-cities-where-you-can-buy-a-home-on-a-60000-dollar-salary.html

This article is true if you can FIND a good home at that price. 

Just an aside, I am always shocked at what you can get for under $200k in El Paso. Granted I wouldn't necessarily want to live there, but still.

[GRDadof3]

15 minutes ago, Pattmost20 said:

Just an aside, I am always shocked at what you can get for under $200k in El Paso. Granted I wouldn't necessarily want to live there, but still.

Texas homes are really cheap. They're almost always built slab-on-grade (no basement) and many of the subcontractors are migrant labor from Mexico. And land is cheap because you can buy it 1000s of acres at a time. 

[GRDadof3]

On 12/28/2018 at 6:05 PM, GRDadof3 said:

I'm guessing actually that the number of deaths as a percentage of an MSA's population is probably pretty standard across most metros. What probably varies a bunch is the number of births. Areas attracting a lot of young families probably have much higher birth rates compared to their death rates. 

I wish there were an easy way to cull that data.

Mlive is looking at births vs deaths in Michigan:

https://www.mlive.com/expo/news/g66l-2019/01/d12c4dc6468525/number-of-michigan-births-hits.html

And they even did a color-coded map of the country's birthrates by State. 

And another article with breakdowns by county:

https://www.mlive.com/expo/news/g66l-2019/01/37926cc2b0664/michigan-counties-ranked-by-nu.html

[walker]

On 11/29/2018 at 9:55 AM, walker said:

. . . The Economist ran an article about last year’s federal tax cut legislation creating “opportunity zones.”  If I’m understanding this right, if you invest in these zones you can write off any capital gains you make for ten years.  As you can see by the title of the article, they consider it a boondoggle:

Will opportunity zones work? Or are they just a tax break for America’s wealthiest?

. . . 

Footnotes:

OPPORTUNITY ZONES RESOURCES including how I came up with the map:

GOV: Opportunity Zones

From the IRS: List of “opportunity zone” census tracts by state and county:

IRS: opportunity zones - census tracts

 

On 11/29/2018 at 12:30 PM, GRDadof3 said:

. . . This is a really bad tax break that was not needed. If you're a landlord (like me), I'm charging enough rent to be cash-flow-positive enough to make the risk worth my while. If the home goes up in value over the time I own it and go to sell, that's just a bonus (one for which I'll pay capital gains tax on and not complain). 

So investors will flood into these zones and buy up properties (even more than they have been) driving up prices which will in turn drive up rents, forcing people out or at least giving them way less disposable income to spend on local businesses. Making poor people even poorer. I would think even most conservatives would see this as a bad idea.  

Just an update on opportunity zones, John Gallagher, the business editor at the Free Press, a couple of days ago wrote about a study that says that the opportunity zones tax break is/was not a good idea.  But then GRDadof3 already said that above:

FREE PRESS: opportunity zones study

[GRDadof3]

9 hours ago, walker said:

 

Just an update on opportunity zones, John Gallagher, the business editor at the Free Press, a couple of days ago wrote about a study that says that the opportunity zones tax break is/was not a good idea.  But then GRDadof3 already said that above:

FREE PRESS: opportunity zones study

Word. Although his reasons are a bit different from mine. 

[GRDadof3]

Interesting glimpse into the local hotel industry from Doug Small of ExpGR.

https://www.experiencegr.com/rapid-exchange/post/a-proven-playbook/?fbclid=IwAR2uQ7eS7sx2dDhNgJT1jJg8ffIPPyq6Ytlaz5mUeima9OEsiG5KfCQjKhk

[GRDadof3]

This is a really great article (with data and graphs, swoon) about the overall housing market in the U.S.  We've talked about a lot of these issues and how they are affecting the local housing market. 

In a nutshell, economy is about as healthy as an economy can get, but housing prices were getting too high. 

https://www.oppenheimerfunds.com/advisors/article/should-we-worry-about-the-us-housing-slowdown

[arcturus]

1 hour ago, GRDadof3 said:

This is a really great article (with data and graphs, swoon) about the overall housing market in the U.S.  We've talked about a lot of these issues and how they are affecting the local housing market. 

In a nutshell, economy is about as healthy as an economy can get, but housing prices were getting too high. 

https://www.oppenheimerfunds.com/advisors/article/should-we-worry-about-the-us-housing-slowdown

And mortgage delinquencies are at an 18 yr low - https://www.mba.org/2019-press-releases/february/mortgage-delinquencies-dropped-to-18-year-low-in-the-fourth-quarter-of-2018

Edited February 19, 2019 by arcturus

[mpchicago]

Bissell is adding about 25,000 square feet of office space at it's Walker headquarters.  They expect to hire 100 new people.    EDIT: The Press says up to 150 employees could fill the space, with a weighted average salary of $75,000.  Not bad.

https://mibiz.com/sections/manufacturing/bissell-to-invest-10-million-to-expand-hq-in-walker

https://www.mlive.com/news/grand-rapids/2019/03/grand-rapids-area-vacuum-manufacturer-adding-100-jobs-10m-expansion.html

A side note,  I know Bissell is big into supporting pets, but you really don't hear their name much when it comes to philanthropy around town.  I'm I wrong?

Edited March 8, 2019 by mpchicago

[GRDadof3]

Grand Rapids back up to 2.4% annual job growth January to January.