DETROIT — Business Leaders for Michigan, the state’s business roundtable, continues to forecast that Michigan’s economy will grow more than the U.S. economy over the next six to 18 months. The forecast is reinforced by 60 percent of BLM members planning to increase hiring in Michigan in just the next six months. Nearly two-thirds added jobs in Michigan last year.
“The avoidance of the fiscal cliff and slow, but steady domestic growth has boosted the overall economic outlook of Michigan’s largest job providers. But they remain far more optimistic about Michigan vs. the nation’s economy by the largest margins we have seen since we started conducting these surveys in 2009,” Doug Rothwell, BLM president and CEO, said. “The optimism of the state’s largest job providers for Michigan is based on progress made stabilizing the state’s finances, addressing long-term debt and structural budget deficits, and improving the costs of doing business here. These are the same issues they feel are not being addressed in Washington and are holding the national economy back from full recovery. They demonstrated that optimism by adding jobs in Michigan last year and planning more this year. Michigan is not an island and will be affected by slower national growth, but BLM members continue to believe we will outperform the American economy over the next 18 months.”
The results reflect a survey of BLM’s 80 executives who are the state’s largest private sector job providers that represent nearly one-quarter of the state’s economy. Highlights of the survey of Business Leaders for Michigan include:
More business leaders (55 percent) believe Michigan’s economy will grow over the next six months and none believe it will get worse. Yet, 68 percent of business leaders forecast that the American economy will be about same over the next six months.
More Michigan business leaders (82 percent) believe the state’s economy will grow over the next 18 months, and none believe it will shrink. Yet only 57 percent of business leaders forecast the American economy will grow in the next 18 months and 15 percent think it will contract.
66 percent of business leaders added jobs in 2012 and 60 percent believe their companies will add jobs in 2013.
