Will Michigan Go Boom or Bust ?

The Detriot Free Press reports:

the latest round of restructuring, in which parts-maker Delphi Corp. has filed for bankruptcy and the UAW has tentatively agreed to pay more for health benefits at General Motors Corp., is eating away at a longtime Michigan entitlement: a middle-class lifestyle for blue-collar workers.

"I don't want to say that no higher-educated workers are being affected by this restructuring, but it's disproportionally affecting earnings and wages and employment among less skilled," Blank said.

"Michigan is in a serious position now," said Lansing-based economist Patrick Anderson. "If we scramble, we can keep a good share of our auto manufacturing jobs. If we fail to do that, we're going to lose a lot of them."

But even now, Ballard said, many Michiganders remain in denial. Michigan ranks 39th among the 50 states for residents with bachelor's degrees or higher, according to U.S. Census data. That sandwiches the state between Tennessee and Alabama. Nor are other Midwest manufacturing states all such low achievers on the educational scale. Illinois ranks a healthy 15th and Ohio 25th.

Michigan's industrial power "created a set of attitudes that hundreds of thousands of Michigan people have a sense that, 'I don't need college, I'm going to get one of those factory jobs,' " Ballard said. "And that is a dream that is shrinking, shrinking, shrinking. One of the biggest challenges facing the Michigan economy is we're sort of behind the curve in the attitude toward the skills levels that we'll have to have."

Read the whole article,Michigan's weather isn't going to help them.