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Five myths about Detroit. Scott Martelle is the author of “Detroit: A Biography” and a former staff writer for the Detroit News and the Los Angeles Times. The city of Detroit filed for bankruptcy protection on July 18 — the largest municipal bankruptcy filing in U.S. history. Detroit, of course, is synonymous with the auto industry, which has been rebounding recently.
So why is Detroit struggling? To find out, let’s dispel some myths about the city’s past and present. 1. Detroit (the city) and Detroit (the auto industry) have been on disparate paths since the mid-20th century, when carmakers began building plants in other parts of the country. These days, only a handful of Detroit residents work in the auto industry. Opinions Orlando Shooting Updates News and analysis on the deadliest mass shooting in U.S. history. post_newsletter348 follow-orlando true after3th false Opinions newsletter Thought-provoking opinions and commentary, in your inbox daily. 2. 3. 4. 5. Scott@scottmartelle.com. How Detroit is helping inmates prepare for jobs. In a classroom with bars on the windows and views of the razor wire that surrounds the Detroit Reentry Center, inmate Mathew Hernandez is learning how to safely remove asbestos and lead-based paint, skills he hopes will land him a construction job when he's released.
"I want to be a legitimate citizen. I want to ... actually be an asset to the community, instead of a leech," said Hernandez, 33, whose addiction to pain pills following a workplace injury culminated in a guilty plea to robbery charges in late 2015. With the unemployment rate at 76% among newly released prisoners in Wayne County, the City of Detroit is using a $4.5-million grant from the U.S. Department of Labor to prepare inmates such as Hernandez for jobs in environmental work, culinary arts and fork-lift operation. According to Mayor Mike Duggan, all these fields are hiring workers in Detroit. "We went and looked at where employers were hiring right now," Duggan said.
More: "The pay is very good. Read more: A retraining program that works: Finding jobs in Detroit. In the aftermath of Detroit's historic bankruptcy, attention will turn quickly to a much more troubling problem than the city's balance sheet: the crisis of structurally unemployed residents in Detroit. For a true turnaround, the city must put people back to work — but simply prescribing a quick fix would ignore the deeply rooted problems in the labor force, including a lack of modern job skills, rampant illiteracy, transit problems and a fundamental lack of opportunities. The resurgence of downtown and Midtown Detroit is creating jobs for high-tech workers with advanced degrees and spurring new real estate developments aimed at young educated professionals.
But the city's economy continues to generate little opportunity for unemployed residents in the impoverished neighborhoods. That's where the Michigan Economic Development Corp.' Auto supplier Magna International, which added 76 workers through the program in 2012 and 2013, recently signed a contract to expand its commitment. Now, Gov. Manufacturers see historic opportunity to shape policy. Jay Timmons, president and CEO of the National Association of Manufacturers, said Friday he sees an opportunity for the U.S. to strike a new, bilateral trade agreement with China as the Trump administration restructures America’s trade policies.
Timmons, in an interview with the Free Press, said one of the likely outcomes of the Trump administration's approach to free trade agreements is more bilateral deals with individual nations instead of multinational deals. That, Timmons said, opens up an opportunity for the U.S. to try to strike a deal with China that would address currency manipulation, tariffs and other trade practices.
It’s an idea that Timmons said he has been thinking about for some time but has not yet proposed to the Trump administration. Timmons said the National Association of Manufacturers was in favor of the Trans-Pacific Partnership, a 12-nation trade deal with a number of nations in Southeast Asia that the Trump administration ended. Read more: 7.9 million jobs lost, many forever - Jul. 2, 2010.
By Chris Isidore, senior writerJuly 2, 2010: 11:46 PM ET NEW YORK (CNNMoney.com) -- The recession killed off 7.9 million jobs. It's increasingly likely that many will never come back. The government jobs report issued Friday shows that businesses have slowed their pace of hiring to a relative trickle. "The job losses during the Great Recession were so off the chart, that even though we've gained about 600,000 private sector jobs back, we've got nearly 8 million jobs to go," said Lakshman Achuthan, managing director of Economic Cycle Research Institute.
Excluding temporary Census workers, the economy has added fewer than 100,000 jobs a month this year -- a much faster and stronger jobs recovery than occurred following the last two recessions in 2001 and 1991. But even if that pace of hiring were to double immediately, it would take until 2013 to recapture the lost jobs.
"We've entered a era where the United States will see more frequent recessions than anyone is used to," Achuthan said. During the 'Lost Decade,' Michigan Shed More Jobs Than U.S. as a Whole [Michigan Capitol Confidential] Michigan vs. U.S. employment (click to enlarge). (In a Sept. 23 interview, the Democratic candidate for lieutenant governor, Lisa Brown, said, "I think the Granholm years, you know, weren’t as bad as we think.” This article is part of a Michigan Capitol Confidential series examining how the state’s economy actually fared during Michigan’s "lost decade.
") When the Great Recession hit the U.S. in December of 2007, state economies buckled. But in the four years preceding it Michigan was the only state to lose jobs overall. Over the entire decade, from 2000 to 2009, the state lost 805,900 jobs, or 1 in every 6 – a 17.2 percent reduction in employment. Nationwide, the U.S. began the decade with modest declines in employment, but then job growth picked up strongly through 2007. Christopher Douglas, an associate professor of economics at University of Michigan-Flint, said Gov. But it is just so hard to know exactly how many job losses are attributable to her policies, Douglas said. See also: Trump vows 25 million jobs, most of any president - Jan. 20, 2017.
He calls it the "America First" doctrine. It's not just a slogan. The new president promises his plans will create 25 million new jobs in the next decade. It would be the most jobs created under any U.S. president ever, topping even the nearly 23 million jobs added under President Bill Clinton during the boom years of the 1990s. "We will bring back our jobs. It might as well be called Trump's economic red line. Trump has tapped into the economic anxiety so many Americans feel. For Trump, no place exemplifies the struggles of Americans than the Rust Belt. Related: 2,000 GM workers to lose jobs on Trump Inauguration Day Trump's manufacturing promise "Rusted out factories are scattered like tombstones across the landscape of our nation," Trump said. It's true that the U.S. has lost 5 million manufacturing jobs since 2000. While jobs came back under Obama, the pay did not rebound.
So how will Trump deliver 25 million jobs? Related: Investors are the most bullish in 2 years Trump's big challenges. Trump Wants to Build a Wall. Finding Workers Won’t Be Easy - Bloomberg. President Donald Trump’s proposed border wall faces many obstacles. One of the tallest: building it without undocumented workers. A labor shortage has left few hands to build houses and factories in the region, where wages have already been rising and projects delayed. Now, the president’s plan for “immediate construction of a border wall” will force the government to find legal builders for a project that could employ thousands if not tens of thousands.
About half of construction workers in Texas are undocumented, and nationwide 14 percent lack authorization for employment in the U.S., according to the Workers Defense Project, an Austin group that advocates for undocumented laborers. “If he is going to build a wall with legal workers in Texas, he is going to have a very hard time,” said Stan Marek, chief executive officer of Marek Brothers, a Houston commercial builder. Presidential Favor Suddenly Scarce. Donald Trump transition team: How to get a White House job. Have you always wanted to work for the federal government? Here's your chance, because President-elect Donald Trump is scouting more than 4,000 new political employees as he prepares to enter the White House. He made the announcement on his GreatAgain.gov site and newly created Twitter account, Transition 2017, this week, listing four different types of appointments he's looking to fill: Presidential Appointments with Senate Confirmation (PAS) The 1,212 senior leader positions, which must be approved by the Senate, include Cabinet secretaries and their deputies, the heads of most independent agencies and ambassadors.
Presidential Appointments without Senate Confirmation (PA) These 353 positions, which mostly consists of the White House staff, do not need Senate approval. Non-career Senior Executive Service Trump needs 680 employees for this category. From schedulers and assistants to policy experts, there are 1,403 openings available for these confidential roles. Donald Trump Wall: How Many Jobs Would It Create? | Money. Even after President Donald Trump’s executive order to begin construction of a border wall with Mexico, the actual plans are still the subject of speculation. From how long the structure will be (1,000 to 2,000 miles), to the wall's budget ($12 billion to $15 billion, or even $25 billion), and who will end up paying for it (Mexico!
Or maybe not), the new administration has plenty of details to iron out. But one certainty, experts say, is that if construction forges ahead as expected, it will create thousands of jobs for American workers. Michael Montgomery, a consultant who helps developers estimate their projects' economic impact, says a building project on the scale of Trump’s speculative wall should create between 21,200 and 25,600 jobs for "at least the period of construction,” basing his estimate on the $12 billion to $15 billion budget mentioned by Senate majority leader Mitch McConnell.
There’s one caveat, though. Anatomy of Detroit’s Decline - Interactive Feature. Mayor Coleman A. Young of Detroit at an event in 1980. Richard Sheinwald/Associated Press The financial crisis facing Detroit was decades in the making, caused in part by a trail of missteps, suspected corruption and inaction.
Here is a sampling of some city leaders who trimmed too little, too late and, rather than tackling problems head on, hoped that deep-rooted structural problems would turn out to be cyclical downturns. Charles E. Bowles, backed by the Ku Klux Klan, was in office for seven months in 1930 before people demanded his removal. Edward Jeffries, who served as mayor from 1940 to 1948, developed the Detroit Plan, which involved razing 100 blighted acres and preparing the land for redevelopment. Albert Cobo was considered a candidate of the wealthy and of the white during his tenure from 1950 to 1957. Coleman A. Kwame M. Dave Bing, a former professional basketball star, took office in 2009 pledging to solve Detroit’s fiscal problems, which by then were already overwhelming. The rise and fall of Detroit: A timeline.
Sign Up for Our free email newsletters On Thursday, Detroit made history — and not in a good way. The heart of the U.S. auto industry and home to the Detroit Tigers, Eminem and the White Stripes, Motown, and (maybe) Jimmy Hoffa's body became the largest city ever to file for bankruptcy. In many ways, this financial crisis is 60 years in the making.
As the Motor City faces an uncertain future, here's a look back at some key dates in the long, storied past of one of America's great cities: July 24, 1701Antoine de La Mothe Cadillac establishes a French settlement, Fort Ponchartrain du Détroit (the strait), along with 100 French soldiers and an equal number of Algonquins. 1760Britain wins the city from the French. 1796U.S. forces capture Detroit from the British. Feb. 1, 1802Detroit becomes a chartered city, covering about 20 acres. 1827Detroit adopts its forward-looking city motto: Speramus Meliora; Resurget Cineribus (We hope for better days; it shall rise from the ashes). 1899Ransom E.