Labor Force Participation

We Can’t Afford To Miss This One-Time Chance To Improve Adult Ed

TalentFirst members are at the forefront of driving improvements in Michigan’s adult education system. As employers, they recognize the critical role that adult ed plays...

Investing in Child Care Pays Dividends to Employers — and All of Us

Child care is one of the biggest expenses facing working parents, often costing more than housing or health care. In Michigan, the average annual cost...

Why we’re watching Georgia’s experiment with Medicaid work requirements

Through a series of complex legislative and judicial actions, Georgia in July became the only state to implement work requirements to qualify for expanded Medicaid...

Is the ‘Great Resignation’ over? Data shows the answer is complicated

A recent headline from Axios declared what might appear to be good news for employers: “The Great Resignation is over, quit rates return to pre-pandemic...

We can fix the safety net so everyone benefits

Proposed federal legislation to reform food-stamp work requirements has revived a decades-long debate about the nature of benefits programs and their role in keeping people...

How We Can Unlock the Potential of Formerly Incarcerated Talent

An estimated 1 in 3 working-age adults has a criminal history, representing a largely untapped pool of labor that is reliable, productive, eager to succeed...

With AI on the Rise, Workers and Employers Need to Keep Up

A pandemic-fueled boom in high-tech automation has created opportunities as well as risks. Employers have an opportunity to manage both. The opportunities come in the...

Michigan’s Shrinking Workforce: A Report on a Two-Decade Problem

Michigan’s workforce has shrunk by more than 703,000 people since 2000. The big question: Where did those 703,000-plus people go?

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Growing talent gap plagues Michigan businesses

Post-pandemic, the number of help-wanted signs and online job postings have soared; it seems a crisis has arisen overnight. The need for talent in Michigan,...

Labor Market Trends and Insights from Q4 2021

This week we released our first quarterly labor market report of the year, which spans the fourth quarter of 2021. These reports play an integral...