West Michigan/Grand Rapids Economy

[GRDadof3]

43 minutes ago, jdkacz said:

Grand Rapids area ranked 13th despite being 'located off the beaten path'

GR grew nearly twice the national average, or 4x as much as some cities that I'd say are in the same league as GR. Hartford, Richmond, etc.

That's some impressive company to be with on that list. What's even more interesting is the bottom 10. I assume Houston is taking a hit with the oil/energy crash? Kansas City and Chicago though? 

[The ATX]

2 minutes ago, GRDadof3 said:

That's some impressive company to be with on that list. What's even more interesting is the bottom 10. I assume Houston is taking a hit with the oil/energy crash? Kansas City and Chicago though? 

OKC and Houston definitely took a big hit because of oil prices.  But anybody visiting Houston would be very surprised that an economic slowdown was taking place.

[ctpgr34]

I didn't say it was all infused for construction.

When I think of a private club in GR, EVCC, KCC, Cascade, & Blythefield come to mind

 

[GRDadof3]

7 minutes ago, ctpgr34 said:

I didn't say it was all infused for construction.

When I think of a private club in GR, EVCC, KCC, Cascade, & Blythefield come to mind

 

Obviously.  But that's not all of them. 

Old money vs new money maybe? Although Egypt Valley is basically new money. Thousands Oaks may be the best of all of them but it's all new money. 

[x99]

On 3/10/2016 at 7:55 PM, GRDadof3 said:

There's definitely a trend of younger people and empty nesters wanting to live in walkable areas. I know quite a few people my age who have abandoned their suburban homes and moved into downtown condos (or near downtown). But yes, the narrative that millennials have given up suburbs, cars and owning homes altogether is a false mantra that just gets repeated endlessly. I also know quite a few people making the move the other direction, to better school districts. 

I've always found it a little alarming how quickly the disenchantment often sets in.  Fact is, good schools and not having your stuff stolen eventually beats out the short commute for most.  As for living in a "walkable" environment.  Well, they have sidewalks in the suburbs, and no matter where you live in GR, the same car still gets you to the store... 

4 hours ago, The ATX said:

Year over year lists can be misleading, but this is great news.  Grand Rapids is playing with the big boys of economic growth - San Jose, Austin, San Antonio, Portland, Nashville... 

Is it?  Wages still aren't seeing any real growth.  I question whether we were just hit so hard during the recession that a return to semi-normalcy looks like growth.  But I suppose I've never been good at understanding why West Michigan would be a particularly "hot" area.  Maybe the rest of the country is just that awful.  

[GRDadof3]

4 hours ago, x99 said:

I've always found it a little alarming how quickly the disenchantment often sets in.  Fact is, good schools and not having your stuff stolen eventually beats out the short commute for most.  As for living in a "walkable" environment.  Well, they have sidewalks in the suburbs, and no matter where you live in GR, the same car still gets you to the store... 

Is it?  Wages still aren't seeing any real growth.  I question whether we were just hit so hard during the recession that a return to semi-normalcy looks like growth.  But I suppose I've never been good at understanding why West Michigan would be a particularly "hot" area.  Maybe the rest of the country is just that awful.  

No, it's real growth.  4.1% a year for several years now, which is about as high as any city in the country. 

Not the ever controversial "unemployment" rate, but actual growth in full time payroll jobs. It's almost 100,000 net jobs since the bottom of the Great Recession. 

 

 

 

Incomes aren't growing much anywhere in the U.S.. The Grand Rapids area just happened to be already behind the national average.

I hear that a certain economic development group in GR is looking to do something solid about that...

[GRDadof3]

And also this:

http://www.grbj.com/articles/84733-emphasize-downtown-residential-development

Poor Lou Glazer always seems to be a couple years behind the curve. And quoting Richard Florida??

[GRDadof3]

This is really fascinating. In the latest BLS data, Professional and Business Services job growth has cooled a bit in the area, but manufacturing job growth is skyrocketing. It hasn't quite gotten back to the heydays of the 90's, but 30,000 new jobs in the last 5-6 years, and 5.9% growth over last year alone. Since manufacturing has bigger job multipliers than service jobs, I think that bodes well for at least a couple of more years of sustained growth in the overall jobs market. 

Thoughts? 

 

 

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

 

[arcturus]

Curious to know what proportion represents auto related manufacturing and whether its share is any more or less from the previous auto boom.

[GRDadof3]

4 hours ago, arcturus said:

Curious to know what proportion represents auto related manufacturing and whether its share is any more or less from the previous auto boom.

If I had to guess, a lot of it is automotive related, and food production related. I think Kellogg and its subsidiaries/contractors have 3000 or 4000 workers here now. 

[MJLO]

2 hours ago, GRDadof3 said:

If I had to guess, a lot of it is automotive related, and food production related. I think Kellogg and its subsidiaries/contractors have 3000 or 4000 workers here now. 

Kellogg just needs to relocate to GR.

[GR8scott]

52 minutes ago, MJLO said:

Kellogg just needs to relocate to GR.

as cool as that would be it would decimate BC, which has some potential there

[GRDadof3]

5 hours ago, MJLO said:

Kellogg just needs to relocate to GR.

They still make cereal there, not here. Everything here is cereal/granola/breakfast bar related. It does make the commute smell good if you come in from I-196 on the East Side of Gr. The making of cereal? Not so good a smell, from what I remember. 

[MJLO]

9 hours ago, GRDadof3 said:

They still make cereal there, not here. Everything here is cereal/granola/breakfast bar related. It does make the commute smell good if you come in from I-196 on the East Side of Gr. The making of cereal? Not so good a smell, from what I remember. 

I was just referring to the brain trust in their headquarters.  I wasn't talking about their existing manufacturing.  There is a reason they chose to base their new service center in Cascade.

[GRDadof3]

http://www.mlive.com/news/grand-rapids/index.ssf/2016/03/michigans_fastest-growing_metr.html

Compared to the 2010 census, population in the Grand Rapids metro area is up 5 percent, or 49,645. 

Not a surprise. Although I thought that Macomb County might be more in the running, but it's part of the Detroit MSA. 

 

 

[arcturus]

Population gain and losses per county:  http://blogs.census.gov/2016/03/24/growth-or-decline-understanding-how-populations-change/?eml=gd&utm_medium=email&utm_source=govdelivery&cid=16popblog

I found the last map the most interesting ... counties losing population.  Virtually all of NY, Maine, CT, WV, IL, Kansas, NM, Mississippi, almost all of the UP and eastern half of this state.

Edited March 27, 2016 by arcturus

[GRDadof3]

From my post earlier, the manufacturing sector is heating up again this year:

http://wkzo.com/news/articles/2016/apr/11/west-michigan-economy-looking-good/

[arcturus]

State by state unemployment rates.  Michigan tied with NY at 27th lowest unemployment rate in the country.  Throw out Wayne & St Clair counties and MI would probably be in the top 20.  Not sure if it can get much better.  We were as low as 3.2% in 2000.  Don't know how that compared to other states back then.

 

http://www.bls.gov/regions/midwest/summary/blssummary_detroit.pdf

 

[GRDadof3]

About 42,000 more people on payroll than this time in 2013 in the GR MSA. Only 3 years ago. 

That's the size of a small city (42,000). 

 

[GRDadof3]

I thought we were maybe seeing a slight slowdown in job growth. I say "slowdown" because it dropped from red hot 4%ish annual growth to the 2.4 - 2.9% range, still pretty doggone good. Now it's back up to 3% year over year in July. False alarm. Grow on. 

 

 

 

[GRDadof3]

Non-farm payroll jobs came in at a respectable 2.4% growth rate in November over this time last year. 

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

 

The real bright spot was Professional and Business Service jobs. It had lagged earlier this year but has spiked up this last quarter. Part of me almost wonders if the dip earlier this year was miscalculations by BLS (how else would one sector take a strange dip in a short period of time and then come back up?) Did some call center with 3000 people close down that we don't know about?  

Doesn't that dip earlier this year look out-of-place? 

 

[mpchicago]

Chevron moving Grand Rapids headquarters to Naperville

Is this a sign of companies not having luck finding qualified workers/talent in West Michigan, or what?  Obviously, Chicago is a strong labor market, with lots of talent, but the business, tax, and government environments are awful here (in Illinois).  And this on the heals that GE Aviation announcement that they are laying off about 70 people in Cascade Twp too, mostly engineers. At GE they claimed that the layoffs were due to a slowdown in the aviation market.

 

 

Edited January 23, 2017 by mpchicago

[wingbert]

32 minutes ago, mpchicago said:

Chevron moving Grand Rapids headquarters to Naperville

Is this a sign of companies not having luck finding qualified workers/talent in West Michigan, or what?  Obviously, Chicago is a strong labor market, with lots of talent, but the business, tax, and government environments are awful here (in Illinois).  And this on the heals that GE Aviation announcement that they are laying off about 70 people in Cascade Twp too, mostly engineers. At GE they claimed that the layoffs were due to a slowdown in the aviation market.

How is this possible?  West Michigan embraced Donald Trump.  He promised this wouldn't happen.  Where's our beloved Betsy Devos in all this?  Is she too busy fighting off grizzly bears attacking the aviation academy?

 

[ctpgr34]

39 minutes ago, mpchicago said:

Chevron moving Grand Rapids headquarters to Naperville

Is this a sign of companies not having luck finding qualified workers/talent in West Michigan, or what?  Obviously, Chicago is a strong labor market, with lots of talent, but the business, tax, and government environments are awful here (in Illinois).  And this on the heals that GE Aviation announcement that they are laying off about 70 people in Cascade Twp too, mostly engineers. At GE they claimed that the layoffs were due to a slowdown in the aviation market.

 

 

I have a friend that works here, I think this has been in the works for a few years

[GRLaker]

30 minutes ago, mpchicago said:

Chevron moving Grand Rapids headquarters to Naperville

Is this a sign of companies not having luck finding qualified workers/talent in West Michigan, or what?  Obviously, Chicago is a strong labor market, with lots of talent, but the business, tax, and government environments are awful here (in Illinois).  And this on the heals that GE Aviation announcement that they are laying off about 70 people in Cascade Twp too, mostly engineers. At GE they claimed that the layoffs were due to a slowdown in the aviation market.

 

 

Wait...You mean massive business tax cuts aren't what keep businesses around? Turns out all this time it may be a qualified workforce?