Michigan loses 36,000 jobs in a year as most states add workers

Michigan saw a decline in employment over the past year, with 36,668 fewer people employed in December 2025 than in December 2024, a 0.8% drop.

This places the state in the bottom 10 nationwide for job creation, while 32 other states added jobs over the same period.

Employment in Michigan fell 0.2% from November to December 2025, the 7th-worst performance in the country, according to the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics’ household survey.

The state’s unemployment rate also increased. It reached 5.0%, the nation’s 7th-highest rate.

Thus far during Gov. Gretchen Whitmer’s second term, Michigan is 41st in employment growth, according to the BLS household survey.

Over the same period, the state’s unemployment rate rose from 4.2% to 5.0%, the 13th-largest increase nationally.

“Michigan is losing jobs at a time when much of the rest of the country is gaining them,” James Hohman, fiscal policy director at the Mackinac Center for Public Policy, told Michigan Capitol Confidential in an email.

It’s a sign, according to Hohman, that Michigan lawmakers should work on the basics: cutting taxes, promoting cheaper and more reliable electricity, and reducing the barriers state policy puts on workers.

CapCon reported in September that when Whitmer took office in January 2019, the state’s seasonally adjusted unemployment rate stood at 4.2%. The national average was 4.0%, according to the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics.

Michigan had the 14th-highest unemployment rate in the nation one month before Whitmer took office in her first term, as reported by CapCon.

Right-to-work states saw the quickest recovery from the COVID pandemic, Jarrett Skorup, vice president of marketing and communications at the Mackinac Center, told CapCon. Whitmer and her Democratic allies in the Michigan Legislature repealed the state’s right-to-work law in 2023.

“The contrast could hardly be more stark,” Skorup wrote in a commentary. “Since March 2020, when the pandemic started, 13 of the 15 states that created the most jobs have right-to-work laws. They’ve more than replaced the jobs they lost during the worst of the crisis. Of the top 10 states, only tenth-place Montana lacks a right-to-work law.”

Contrary to a common objection, right-to-work laws do not mean right-to-work for less, Michael LaFaive, senior director of fiscal policy at the Mackinac Center, wrote in 2024.

Whitmer did not respond to a request for comment.