The trend of flat jobs numbers in Michigan continued last month.
Over the past year, Michigan’s unemployment rate never went above 5.5% or dipped below 5%, where December ended.
Wayne Rourke is with the Michigan Center for Data and Analytics. He says the steady numbers could reflect the economy stabilizing after the COVID-19 pandemic recovery.
“2025 saw relative stability after the big increases that we saw throughout 2024. So, it increased throughout 2024 and kind of peaked in early 2025, after that, it started to come down and stabilize a little bit, but a lot of that declined was due to our declining labor force.”
The number of people looking for work has steadily dropped since February, due to factors like retirement or giving up on looking for a job.
Nationally, the workforce total held steady last month.
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