Michigan is going backwards. And that’s a problem for President Obama. . . and Governor Snyder.<\/p>\n
Michigan’s unemployment rate jumped to 9 percent in July – nearly a half point higher than June’s 8.6 percent rate – and continuing a sudden reversal in the state’s recovery. It was the third straight month the jobless rate has risen.<\/p>\n
The news comes despite the continued rebound of the Detroit automotive industry – belying President Obama’s claim that an auto bailout rescued the U.S. economy and focusing attention on Obama’s larger, anti-business regulatory, spending, and tax priorities that are choking national job growth.<\/p>\n
“I am skeptical about the claim that because the auto industry was saved, that saved Michigan,” says James Hohman, chief economist for The Mackinac Center, a Michigan think tank. Hohman notes that Michigan’s unemployment rate is still lower than last July’s 10.6 percent rate, but Michigan’s stalled recovery mirrors the national economic slowdown in the second quarter.<\/p>\n
“There is no decoupling Michigan’s economy from the nation,” says Hohman.<\/p>\n
Granted, Michigan is not the obvious target of Obama’s War on Coal, for example, that is literally\u00a0throwing people out of work<\/a>\u00a0in energy states like Ohio and West Virginia. But Michigan businesses are suffering from the same federal policies that are strangling all commerce: The cost of federal regulation, the uncertainty of Obamacare costs to new hires, increased health costs driven by Obamacare, and the looming tax cliff on January where – if re-elected- Obama threatens to increase the costs of capital (capital gains and dividend tax rates) by a staggering 50 percent.<\/p>\n Business skittishness at the prospect of second term may explain what Hohman calls “a strange, midyear slowdown” in a national recovery that is already the worst since WW2.<\/p>\n