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Oakland County’s boom in tech jobs to continue 2025-26, say U-M experts in annual forecast

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Oakland County is bouncing back from the pandemic faster than the rest of Michigan and faster than most other parts of the country, and it’s growing with more of what every area would like — high-tech, high-paying jobs, say University of Michigan economists.

The U-M experts released their 39th annual forecast of Oakland County’s economy on Thursday, during a luncheon at Novi’s Suburban Collection Showplace. Despite an uncertain future for the Detroit Three automakers, upset by recent layoffs and strikes, the team of U-M economists said that Oakland County is “well-positioned for the future” because the county will continue to attract a big share of Michigan’s managerial and professional jobs, providing prosperity for most of its residents.

The same U-M experts provide annual forecasts for other counties, both in and out of Michigan, as well as for Michigan as a whole. In February, their forecast for the state as a whole said they were “cautiously optimistic” that Michigan would “navigate through the wobbles in the auto industry.” Wednesday’s new report echoed that view, with this mostly good news not just for Oakland County but for all of Michigan:

Less auto-dependent: Over the past two decades, Michigan’s economy made painful but necessary strides to be more diversified, and less dependent on the boom-and-bust cycles of auto making. Oakland County started the push earlier, in the 1990s, under former county executive L. Brooks Patterson, who sought high-tech employers of all sorts as well as more health-care jobs.

Continued job growth: Michigan’s job market will continue to grow “at a healthy pace” over the next two years, having dodged a recession feared in late 2023. Likewise, Oakland County’s job market will keep growing, “outpacing the state’s over the next three years,” with a continued emphasis on highly skilled and well-educated job seekers.

Future worker shortage: This scenario could pull up salaries for some. But in the long run, a predicted shortage of skilled, educated workers might someday hold back Michigan’s economy and Oakland County’s as well. With Michigan’s share of Baby Boomers fast heading for retirement or already there, the state’s employers seem likely to face a shortage of workers, “which will eventually act as a speed limit for both the state and the county, hindering growth,” said Gabriel Ehrlich, a U-M economist who heads the forecasting team.

The predicted shortage of high-skill, high-education workers — not just college-degreed but blue-collar types trained with advanced skills — is a serious worry, Oakland County Executive Dave Coulter told the Free Press, moments before the U-M experts were scheduled to show their forecast to the sold-out luncheon audience of 700 people.

That shortage “is why the governor’s task force has taken this on — really, no one wants to talk about immigration these days, but foreign-born residents (who recently moved to Michigan) are the only reason Oakland County isn’t losing population,” Coulter said. He was referring to a bipartisan group called the Growing Michigan Together Council, which Gov. Gretchen Whitmer formed last year to address Michigan’s stagnant population. Since 2004, Michigan’s population has declined slightly, a trend largely blamed on residents moving away during and following the Great Recession years of 2008-2012.

“We’ve got to figure out how to keep our college graduates here, and of course also how to get more training for our high-school graduates,” Coulter said. Oakland County has launched several county-wide programs under Coulter’s administration, one called “College Navigators,” to nudge high-school students toward more education, either at college or for high-tech training after high school.

The forecast predicts that Oakland County’s unemployment rate should hold steady through 2026 at about 3% while adding about 8,000 new jobs each year. In contrast, the same experts found that Detroit’s jobless rate was triple that of Oakland County, at about 9% early this year, although they expect it to average around 8% this year — despite announced layoffs at the Stellantis plant on Detroit’s east side — and then Detroit’s jobless rate should ease to about 7% by 2028.

Statewide, the economists early this year pegged Michigan’s unemployment rate at just over 4% but they praised the state’s performance for having a “sharply rising labor force participation rate.” In other words, more Michiganders than during the pandemic are looking for work.

“We predict that the state will avoid a downturn in the next two years,” the forecasters said in their Michigan-wide report, released in February. As for Oakland County, the news is mostly bullish for an area that has a total economic impact — called gross domestic product, or GDP — that’s greater than the GDP of 14 entire U.S. states, and which outstrips the GDP of many small countries.

Not resting on those laurels, though, Oakland County leaders used part of Wednesday’s presentation to unveil their latest boost to small-to-medium-size manufacturers. Calling it Phase 2 of Project Diamond, Oakland County Commissioner Dave Woodward, D-Royal Oak, said the program uses federal “ARPA” funds from the pandemic-triggered American Rescue Plan Act, providing 3-D printers to entrepreneurs making parts and products in Oakland County.

In Phase 1, the money went to small firms scrambling to make desperately needed parts and materials to battle the pandemic. Now, its going to 30 companies that will help to rebuild metro-Detroit’s manufacturing base, Woodward said. The machines will mean that small manufacturers won’t need to reach overseas for obtaining parts; they can design and make them “right here in Oakland County,” Woodward said. That will bring back the kind of manufacturing and assembly jobs that metro Detroit lost in the last half century, he said.

“We want this to be an economy that works for every person and every family,” not just the highly educated workers, he said.

Contact Bill Laytner: blaitner@freepress.com

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