When Gov. Gretchen Whitmer took office in 2019, the number of Michiganders who could not afford a “survival budget” was just beginning to wane for the first time since the Great Recession.
By 2022, the number of Michigan households overall had increased by 2%, but the percentage of them struggling to survive had increased by 13%, according to a United for ALICE report.
ALICE – an acronym for Asset Limited, Income Constrained, Employed – refers to residents who can’t afford basics like housing, child care, food, transportation and health care, despite working full-time.
In Whitmer’s Michigan, 41% of the state’s 4 million households live below the ALICE threshold, and that includes more than half in 11 counties: Gogebic, Ontonagon, Houghton, Baraga, Alger, Luce, Oscoda Iosco, Lake, Clare and Wayne.
And in many cities and townships, it’s much worse, based on the 2022 numbers, MLive reports.
All of the top five municipalities with at least 1,000 households have over 70% of residents struggling paycheck-to-paycheck: River Rouge in Wayne County at 79%, Benton Harbor in Berrien County at 78%, Highland Park in Wayne County at 76%, Royal Oak Township in Wayne County at 72%, and Muskegon Heights in Muskegon County at 71%.
Other large cities with high percentages include Detroit at 69%, Ypsilanti at 66%, Pontiac at 66%, Flint at 66%, and Saginaw at 65%, according to MLive.
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“This ALICE Report provides the first look at the extent of financial hardship in Michigan using ALICE metrics as prices rose following the economic shocks of the pandemic,” according to the report.
“Our latest estimates from 2022 – the entry of 100,000 additional households below the ALICE threshold while our state’s population has declined – must be received as both a call to action and a challenge to complacency,” the ALICE report read. “ALICE deserves action to lower their essential costs, to raise their incomes, and to open pathways to new jobs that earn above the ALICE threshold.”
In Michigan, Whitmer’s pandemic edicts cost the state a quarter of its small- and mid-sized businesses, and 81,900 jobs, resulting in a state economy that took far longer than others to recover.
Those edicts have since been ruled unconstitutional, but have contributed along with other Whitmer policies to a freefall across a variety of metrics experts use to gauge success in governance.
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Those policies enacted with the help of Democratic lawmakers in Lansing have come as residents are fleeing the state for lower cost locations, leaving the Whitmer administration to scramble to stop the outflow.
Whitmer’s own Growing Michigan Together Council noted in a report last year that the state is now “lagging in median income, educational outcomes and attainment, and have fallen behind faster-growing peer states in key measures of infrastructure, community well-being, and job opportunities.”
“Outbound migration will continue to be an issue, and I suspect accelerate unless our state makes an about-face in its policy choices,” Michael LaFaive, senior director of the Morey Fiscal Policy Initiative, told The Midwesterner, citing the repeal of the state’s right-to-work law and other policies choices by Democrats that have driven up costs for Michiganders.
“Economics 101 tells us if you raise the price of anything less will be demanded of it,” he said. “So, if lawmakers raise the cost of living, working, and creating jobs, we’ll get less living in Michigan, fewer jobs, and less wealth too.”
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The situation has hit minorities and single parents the hardest, with the ALICE report showing 63% of black households and 47% of Hispanic households in Michigan living below the ALICE threshold.
It’s 73% for single women raising children.
“With pandemic assistance waning while significant challenges remain, there are warning signs that the economic situation for households below the ALICE threshold has worsened since 2022, including sustained high levels of food insufficiency, feelings of anxiety and depression, and continued difficulty paying bills,” according to the report.
“As Michigan charts the future of its economy, leaving ALICE behind will set households and the larger economy up for greater vulnerability during the next economic disruption.”