Michigan’s critical manufacturing industry shed 20,000 jobs over the last year, including at least 4,000 so far in 2025, as unemployment continued to tick up to 5.3% in January.
“The number of unemployed people in Michigan is going up. It has been going up for the past year or so. That’s not unexpected with the news we’ve been hearing with the weakness in manufacturing and retail trade,” Michigan Labor Market Information Director Wayne Rourke told WEMU. “Those are particularly weak industries for Michigan right now.”
Data from the Department of Technology, Management and Budget released Thursday show the number of unemployed Michiganders increased for the 10th consecutive month in January, when another 6,000 lost their jobs.
Compared to the year prior, there were 67,000 more residents without a job in January, marking a 33.3% jump from the same month in 2024. The continued job losses in Michigan come despite a national decline in unemployment of one tenth of a percentage point in January to 4%.
Overall, the number of unemployed in Michigan jumped by 2.3% in January to 268,000, while the number of employed Michiganders stood at 4,824,000 out of 5,092,000 in the state’s civilian labor force.
“Industries with the largest over-the-year payroll gains included private education and health services (+30,000) leisure and hospitality services (+12,000), and government (+11,000),” according to the DTMB. “Manufacturing recorded the greatest decline of all industries both over the month (-4000 jobs or -0.6 percent) and over the year (-20,000 or -3.2 percent).”
A steady stream of Worker Adjustment and Retraining Notifications coming in to the Michigan Department of Labor and Economic Opportunity suggests the state’s job losses will likely continue.
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Flagstar Bank last month issued a WARN notice for 424 employees it plans to lay off from its facility in Troy between April 22 and May 9, marking the company’s third round of layoffs in less than a year.
Flagstar is among 14 large companies slated to lay off a total of 2,028 employees in nine counties by the end of April.
The impending layoffs come as Michigan’s Unemployment Insurance Agency is undergoing numerous changes, from a new director, to continued implementation of a $78 million online unemployment benefits system, to increases in benefits signed into law by Gov. Gretchen Whitmer in December.
The benefits legislation, Senate Bill 40, increases the number of weeks Michiganders can receive unemployment insurance from 20 to 26, while boosting the cap on weekly benefits from $362 to $614 over the next three years, according to The Detroit News.
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Based on current trends, a Senate Fiscal Analysis predicts the increase in the weekly benefit maximum could add $531.1 million in additional pay outs annually in 2027, bringing the total annual UI payouts to up to $1.4 billion.
“Total pay outs would be even higher during an economic recession,” the analysis read. “The total would be less than the total amount of UI revenue generated, which currently is $1.2 billion and would decrease the Unemployment Insurance Trust Fund balance, which is currently at $2.8 billion.”
The legislation was strongly opposed by the Small Business Association of Michigan, the Michigan Manufacturers Association, National Federation of Independent Businesses, and most Republicans, who noted the benefits are funded entirely by job creators.
“Dramatically raising the amount and the length of unemployment benefits almost certainly would lead to higher state unemployment taxes for businesses than they would otherwise face,” Sen. Thomas Albert, R-Lowell, said in a statement cited by the Detroit Free Press. “And we should not be adopting policies that further raise costs for job providers when they are already reeling from the same inflationary pressures and other economic factors that all Michiganders have faced for the last few years.”