A year after enduring its worst labor market in history, the Oakland County economy will stem the tide of job losses this year before adding jobs in 2011, U-M economists say.
In their annual forecast of the Oakland County economy, George Fulton and Don Grimes of the Institute for Research on Labor, Employment, and the Economy say that Oakland lost an unprecedented 60,000 jobs in 2009 — more than the previous five years combined — and will lose another 9,900 jobs this year.
But Oakland County will add 2,400 jobs next year — the most since 2000 — and nearly 8,000 jobs in 2012, they say.
“The Oakland County economy has been on a rollercoaster ride during the first decade of the 21st century,” says George Fulton of the Institute for Research on Labor, Employment, and the Economy. “Job loss in the county mushroomed to an unimaginable number in 2009, reflecting the sharp decline in the national economy and the fallout from the shrinkage of the domestic auto industry.
“But the economic situation has stabilized over the past several months, and Oakland County seems once again to be poised for recovery.”
Fulton and Grimes say that while the next two years are expected to show the strongest performance in a decade for Oakland County, job gains by 2012 will reach only about half of what they averaged from 1980 to 2000 and the county will still have fewer jobs than it had at the end of 2008.
