Leaders at agencies working to combat unemployment are seeing signs that southwest Michigan is heading back to work.
Al Pscholka, the former State Budget Director who now analyzes labor numbers for Kinexus, reported during a roundtable with Michigan Works and members of the media that 2,700 people joined the Berrien, Cass and Van Buren County labor market in May.
About 1,700 of the new jobs were in Berrien County alone, with Cass and Van Buren splitting the rest.
“This is the largest gain in the size of the labor market since the pandemic started,” Pscholka said. “That is really, really good news.”
Pscholka said there are now 130,000 people in the tri-county labor force, however the area is still down 3,800 people from where it was at the start of the pandemic. There continues to be demographic and macroeconomic challenges such as education levels, interest rates and inflation.
A portion of the labor market growth came from the seasonal uptick and recovery of the Leisure and Hospitality sector. The question, he said, is whether that improvement is sustainable after the Summer vacation and travel season ends.
“A lot of it is seasonal, but we also think it is a lot of people have come back to the labor market,” Pscholka said. “We’ve been sending the message for the last year and a half … ‘Please come back to work. Because, when an economic downturn happens, you want to make sure you’ve got a job.'”
During the roundtable, other major employment sectors were reported to have their own challenges. Health Care, Southwest Michigan’s largest sector, still is witnessing an exodus of skilled workers. Manufacturing continues to fight the battle of ‘unskilled job applicants.’ Job training programs are either non-existent or can’t react fast enough to fill the manufacturing job vacancies.
Michigan Works reported that a recent Job Fair in Benton Harbor resulted in 38 job offers being extended and 19 individuals being hired. An ‘Expungement Fair’ – where job seekers can begin the process of clearing their records of old criminal convictions – attracted 76 applicants.
