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It’s generally seen as good news when the state’s unemployment rate goes down.
Michigan’s unemployment rate fell again in July to 3.7 percent and has been at its lowest point since 2000, according to the state department that tracks it.
That means companies are hiring more people. Right?
Not exactly.
An underlying problem is that people are giving up looking for work, harkening back to the deepest depths of the Great Recession.
In Michigan, people out of the workforce are disproportionately teenagers between the ages of 16 and 19, and adults who don’t have a bachelor’s degree, according to American Community Survey estimates.
The trend is not good news. Its causes are diverse and include a lingering hangover from the Great Recession, shifting cultural attitudes toward teenagers working, but it also indicates a gap between the skills that would-be workers have and the jobs that employers say are going begging.