But none of those fancy facts matter unless it means better employment opportunities for the average American worker. Our state, let alone our country, needs to start seeing an increase in jobs, and Michigan needs to diversify its job market.
Michigan could see the economic crash coming before any other state in the Union. Job losses, foreclosure, plants closing; it felt like every newspaper headline from Detroit was the same old bad news. We were probably the first to fall into the economic recession.

Now that the recovery seems to be working, we Michiganians need to learn from our past mistakes.

I’m not saying we have to give up on the auto industry, but we can’t blindly hold onto one industry the way we used to. We can’t hope Michigan will become the Motor City of yesteryear. Let’s start looking at new opportunities for Michigan.
The entertainment industry is a great start. Just last year, the film industry created more than 8,000 new jobs in the state, half for crew work and half for actors. And according to the Michigan Film Office, an estimated $223.6 million was spent for filming in Michigan.

How about green energy? According to the Michigan Green Jobs report of 2009, Michigan has 109,067 private sector green jobs. But right now, the green economy only represents 3 percent of the overall private sector employment. There’s a lot more potential for growth in the green sector, but we aren’t seeing it as of late.

In November 2009, Entrepreneur Magazine listed East Lansing as one of the top 10 college towns to start a business. I’d consider that a positive as well.

Let’s not confuse my optimism for a disregard of how many Michigan workers still are out of a job. According to preliminary figures released by the Bureau of Labor Statistics, our unemployment rate in March still sat at 14.1 percent, which is 4.4 percent higher than the national rate.

But Michigan has seen four months of increased employment. In December 2009, our unemployment rate sat at 14.5 percent. It’s not much of a drop, but it’s a drop, and that’s something that should be acknowledged.
It’s finally looking up for outgoing graduates. For once in our college careers, we can see the light at the end of the tunnel. The state of Michigan has been seeing a steady decline in jobs since mid-2005 when our index was floating around 103. At least now we can at look at our graduation day in May and think, “maybe there still are job opportunities within the Great Lakes state.“

It seems a lot of my fellow soon-to-be graduates have been talking about how they won’t find any opportunities in Michigan, and I don’t blame them. I’ve applied to jobs and internships from Virginia to California. But now people can find more in-state options as opposed to leaving. I can’t think of any reason why that’s a bad thing.

Looking at the statistics, Michigan might be seeing the growth it needs to pull out of its economic woes. We’re still a long ways away from seeing enough opportunity for graduates to make it in Michigan, but at least we can be excited about what’s coming up after May.

Matt Mikus is a State News guest columnist and journalism senior. Reach him at mikusmat@msu.edu.