Sure, it would be pure nostalgia, but I suspect most of us never stopped to appreciate the good times. Everything changed so quickly starting in 2001. And after a very rough decade we just got the bad news.
We’re never going back.
In fact, the past decade of economic struggle is as good as it gets – at least until 2040. So, before we ponder that gloomy scenario, offered by the Southeast Michigan Council of Governments, which, unfortunately, is usually accurate, take one last look back at the decade of the 1990s – especially the late ‘90s — in Macomb County.
Unemployment hovering around 3 percent. Gas prices below $2 a gallon. The U.S. car industry cruising along with strong sales. Blue-collar bonuses of more than $10,000 for some workers. Luxury homes sprouting up across the horizon. Boats of all sizes clogging the docks at Lake St. Clair marinas.
Never again.
This has nothing to do with partisan politics or who sits in the White House or who controls Congress. These are the standard SEMCOG projections based on sophisticated compilations of economic and demographic trends. In this case, the council is comparing 2010 to 2040.
And what SEMCOG delivered was a cold slap in the face to everyone who lives in Macomb County, as well as across southeast Michigan. All of us who were buoyed by falling unemployment rates and new economic growth over the past 18 months may have been fooled.
The sobering SEMCOG report released on Thursday predicts that Macomb County will not, in the foreseeable future, regain all the manufacturing jobs it lost since 2000. And the county will experience population losses in the coming decade before posting a modest increase of 7.7 percent cumulative growth by 2040.
Macomb manufacturing jobs in 2040 will remain 12 percent short of where they were in 2000. Those who are not sufficiently educated to apply for “knowledge-based” jobs – in high-tech manufacturing, health care and engineering — may be left behind.
The report predicts that only nine Macomb communities will experience relatively modest growth, in the double-digit range, through 2040 – Bruce Township, Chesterfield Township, New Baltimore, Harrison Township, New Haven, Lenox Township, Macomb Township, Shelby Township and Washington Township.
Chesterfield Township tops the list at 24.6 percent, or slightly less than 1 percent per year.
In contrast, five communities – Memphis, Mount Clemens, Richmond Township, Roseville and Ray Township — will see their population settle at a lower rate in 2040 than where it stood in the last census. Richmond Township leads this group at minus 7.1 percent.
Other cities, such as Warren, Fraser, and St. Clair Shores, will see virtually no growth – for 30 years.
Of course, stagnation leads to deterioration.
If the SEMCOG numbers are right, it’s painful to imagine what some south Macomb communities will look like in the coming decades.
Imagine what will happen on Groesbeck, where the “for sale” signs serve as grave markers for those manufacturing businesses that died during the economic collapse. Will all those buildings be torn down? Will those sites be reduced to dirt and dust?
Consider the future of those north Macomb subdivisions that serve as graveyards left behind by the housing market collapse, where land was leveled to construct water and sewer lines and paved streets – but still no houses. Because the foreclosure crisis hit so hard in our county, SEMCOG Executive Director Paul Tait estimates that housing construction – a driving force in Macomb for decades – will be nearly nonexistent in the future.
Specifically, Macomb’s rapidly rising communities of the past two decades have passed their heyday.
Macomb Township held the No. 1 position throughout the late 1990s and much of the 2000s as Michigan’s fastest-growing community. Though the local housing market collapsed by 2007, for the decade Macomb Township still posted a 64 percent population increase in the 2000s.
In comparison, the period from 2010-40 will produce a cumulative gain in people living in the township of a little less than 20 percent.
Overall, Macomb County’s population rose 6.7 percent from 2000 to 2010, despite the severely damaged economy. Now, SEMCOG forecasts Macomb growth of just 7.7 percent when all the measurements are completed over 30 years in 2040.
We may hold out hope that local job training programs and new university courses and an emphasis on the defense industry will lead the way to a brighter future.
But I fear that the dark days of the 2000s that we thought were behind us are now returning, as a new economic wind brings us a stark and scary horizon.
So, I want to know: Who’ll stop the rain?
