Malaise in Michigan

The Daily takes an in-depth look at the damage Big Labor has done to the Michigan economy reporting:

• Grand Valley State University economist Hari Singh found that if Michigan had been a right-to-work state, the auto industry would have seen a 25 percent gain in jobs since 1965. Instead, it lost 56.6 percent just between 2002 and 2009, shrinking its work force by 165,777, reports The Daily.
• Various polls have found that 50 to 60 percent of likely Michigan voters support a right-to-work law.
• Since jobs can’t come to Michigan, Michigan residents followed the jobs. Michigan lost 11.7 percent of its 25-34 age group between 1993 and 2003 — while right-to-work states gained 3.8 percent.
• Not a single foreign automaker has ever taken advantage of Michigan’s legions of out-of-work but highly trained employees, preferring to train novices in right-to-work states.
• Aggressively pursuing a pro-union agenda with unemployment stubbornly stuck at 9.1 percent would work if Obama wanted to be a kamikaze president, hell-bent on self-destructing. Unions protect wages at the cost of jobs — the main reason they are in trouble in Michigan.  Michigan’s unemployment rate, consistently higher than the national average, soared above 15 percent between 2009 and 2010. No state, not even Katrina-stricken Louisiana, had seen this kind of unemployment in 25 years.