By Scott Pohl, WKAR News
LANSING, MI –
Recent announcements that Michigan car companies are hiring new workers and making profit-sharing payments to workers could be early signs that the state's economy is starting to rebound.
Michigan State University economist Charles Ballard says Michigan may finally be coming back from a decade of job losses.
"I believe that the Michigan economy is likely in 2011 to have net job growth for the first time in a decade," Ballard says. "We haven't had net job growth for a year since the year 2000. We've lost jobs in every year since then, and in fact, we lost jobs in the second half of 2000."
Ballard is director of MSU's State of the State survey. Results released last week show 57% of respondents think they'll be doing better financially a year from now, the highest it's been in five years.