Gov. Rick Snyder has delivered his State of the State address, and we have learned about the general direction and broad policy decisions that attempt to return Michigan to its former prominence as a leading economic power among the states. By now, most readers understand the relationship of employment, household income and population change, and any solutions offered by the governor have addressed all of these in one way or another. The recent release of the first results from the 2010 U.S. Census provides another perspective on these issues.

Every 10 years the U.S. Census is conducted as required by Article 1, Section 2 of the U.S. Constitution in order to determine how many representatives each state will have among the 435 total seats in the U.S. House of Representatives for the next 10 years. Every state gets at least one seat, but most states have larger delegations to reflect their larger share of the total number of U.S. residents counted. For Michigan, the 2010 census has brought bad news in at least two different ways.

First, as has been widely publicized, Michigan saw a decline in population during the 10 years between 2000 and 2010. The official count for Michigan as of April 1, 2010 was 9,883,640, a decline of almost 55,000 residents from the 2000 total of 9,938,444. Some of this decline reflects the substantial loss of manufacturing jobs, especially automobile and auto parts manufacturing employment over the past decade, and some of this undoubtedly reflects the continued outbound movement of at least some of Michigan’s college-educated population looking for opportunities elsewhere.

Taken at face value, these trends do not send the message of dynamic change and growth that can help Michigan attract new business, jobs and wealth. Even as most of the entire Midwest and Northeast lagged behind the nationwide growth of almost 10 percent over the past 10 years, Michigan was the only state to actually show a loss.

The second impact of this result is that Michigan will again lose some of its prior influence in the U.S. House. As Figure 1 illustrates, and despite continuous growth for 100 years until the last decade, Michigan’s Congressional delegation has been shrinking since 1970 when it peaked at 19 members. When the new Congress is seated in 2012, there will only be 14 representatives from the Great Lakes State in the U.S. House of Representatives.

Fewer representatives in Washington, D.C. implies a loss of influence and impact for Michigan in national affairs, and that means greater effort on the part of our Congressional representatives to make sure Michigan’s needs are heard and are addressed. This also implies greater effort to build the kind of environment that will attract capital investment and jobs to Michigan and that will help to retain some of our best educated and most highly skilled residents.

For the Greater Lansing area, the trends are not so dire. Even with the restructuring of the automobile industry and the overall decline in state government employment since 2000, the Greater Lansing area eked out a modest 1.3 percent growth, with 5,700 additional residents in the region bringing our total up to just fewer than 450,000 as of 2009. Most of this occurred in Clinton County and Eaton County while Ingham County lost about 1,800 residents or 0.6 percent. In fact, according to U.S. Census Bureau 2009 estimates, Clinton County was the fourth fastest growing county in the state over the past decade, following only Livingston, Grand Traverse and Ottawa counties. This is clearly a positive sign for business and industry in the region despite Greater Lansing still following the state’s three growth hotspots over the past decade: the Detroit suburbs, the Grand Rapids region and the Grand Traverse Bay area. These trends through 2009 are illustrated in Figure 2.

We will have more detail about how our region has grown and where that growth has occurred as more detailed figures from the 2010 census are released later this spring. This additional information and its importance to the Greater Lansing business community will be presented at a later date.

		Laurence S. Rosen, PhD is senior project manager at Public Policy Associates, Incorporated, a Lansing-based public policy research, development and evaluation firm with a nationwide clientele.