Compete For Good Jobs
To become a “Top Ten” state, Michigan must not only create jobs, but good ones.
The state must establish an environment that recognizes the challenges of an increasingly competitive and global economy by encouraging and supporting entrepreneurship and growth. These conditions allow businesses to thrive, and create opportunities that sustain families and communities.
While Michigan currently falls in the bottom half of states in overall business climate rankings, it remains in the top 15 states for corporate and business taxes. These data suggest that Michigan must continue to focus on maintaining competitive tax structures while streamlining and improving its regulatory environment. By improving the overall business climate, the state can create the competitive conditions needed to deliver: (i) the high-quality job opportunities that generate greater economic security for families, and (ii) stronger productivity and economic output for employers.
Every state is fighting for good jobs. To compete, Michigan must advance innovative and effective tax, regulatory, energy, and investment strategies that will produce sustained employment growth and long-term economic development.
Recommendations
- Maintain a competitive state tax climate and continue to modernize Michigan’s tax system:
- Reflect changes in the composition of the economy and adopt broad, fair and flat taxes wherever practical.
- Maintain competitive energy costs.
- Determine the impact of property taxes on Michigan’s competitiveness.
- Continue improving the state’s regulatory environment:
- Require state agencies to publicly disclose information about planned regulatory actions on a monthly basis and engage stakeholders early in the regulatory process.
- Require a plan to evaluate the effectiveness of major rules.
- Designate a lead agency to have primary responsibility for coordinating reviews of a project, and ensure that permits are processed by multiple agencies in parallel and according to a firm schedule (e.g., 180 days).
- Create an inventory of pending permits by agency and program, and expand online dashboards to track the status of permits for all major projects and provide links to relevant documents.
- Support comprehensive federal regulatory reform (consistent with recommendations outlined by the national Business Roundtable):
- Objectively analyze costs and benefits of proposed and final major rules from agencies, including independent regulatory commissions.
- Publicly disclose information about planned regulatory actions on a monthly basis and engage stakeholders early in the regulatory process.
- Ensure every major rule includes a plan for how the agency will evaluate its effectiveness over time.
- Congress should consider other changes to the Administrative Procedure Act, particularly relating to the content of the rulemaking record and greater judicial scrutiny of that record.
- Provide competitive state economic development support:
- Act cohesively to attract and grow more good jobs across Michigan by building greater alignment among stakeholders on: (i) the importance of a strong state economy, (ii) the role of economic development, and (iii) the importance of consistent, competitive policies.
- Utilize the Michigan Economic Development Corporation’s public-private structure to strengthen the role the private sector could play to help Michigan attract talent, investment and good jobs.
- Ensure economic development is consistently funded at competitive levels and that Michigan maintains competitive and effective economic development tools.
- Emphasize the growth of all businesses—large, small & start-ups.
- Maintain strong global trade and export support services to support Michigan business growth.
- Reinforce the Michigan Economic Development Corporation as a single point of contact for business talent needs:
- Drive a customer-centered approach to service delivery through the coordination of job training services for new or expanding businesses as part of the state’s economic development program.
- Facilitate collaboration and sharing of best practices among job training service providers and navigate programs and partners for new or expanding businesses.
- Provide on-demand job training to meet the needs of employers expanding or relocating to Michigan at the time, place, and schedule that meets their needs.
- Accelerate the speed of delivering on-demand job training by regularly anticipating high-demand employer skill requirements to develop customized training solutions.
- Promote the Jobs Ready Michigan brand for on-demand job training to strengthen Michigan’s reputation of delivering these services.
- Examine every federal- and state-funded job training program to ensure resources are fully leveraged to respond to employer needs.