LANSING – Crashing into statistical territory not seen in better than two decades, Michigan’s unemployment rate hit 10.6 percent in December, statistics released by the Department of Energy, Labor and Economic Growth showed Wednesday. The increase means that at the end of 2008 an estimated 519,000 workers were out of a job.

And the news will get no better in 2009. At a press conference announcing the numbers and the steps the state will take to ease the situation facing people filing claims for unemployment, Governor Jennifer Granholm said she had already seen notices of 28 mass layoffs just so far this month. That number exceeds the number of such legally required notices the state has seen in some years, she said.

At the Revenue Estimating Conference held on January 9, economists forecast that unemployment would top 11 percent for 2009. And economist David Littmann, now with the Mackinac Center for Public Policy, said Wednesday he anticipated unemployment could top 12 percent for the year.

The December rate is one full percentage point higher than November’s rate, and 3.2 percentage points higher than the December 2007 unemployment rate.

It marks the first time since 1985 that the state has had an unemployment rate topping 10 percent, and it is the largest unemployment rate in the state since December 1984.

For 2008, the state averaged 8.4 percent unemployment. Every month during 2008 total employment in the state fell.

According to the Senate Fiscal Agency, the 2008 average rate of 8.4 percent was 1.3 percentage points higher than the 2007 average rate of 7.1 percent.

And the 2008 rate was the highest annual rate since the 9.2 percent average annual rate of 1992.

In December, the state’s total workforce stood at 4.89 million, 95,000 fewer than in December 2007 and 21,000 fewer than in November 2008.

In December, there were 4.37 million people working in the state, 242,000 fewer than in December 2007 and 68,000 fewer than in November 2008.

In December, there were 519,000 unemployed workers in the state, 147,000 more than in December 2007 and 47,000 more than in November 2008.

Granholm said the state was facing an “urgent crisis” both in terms of the number of people without work and in handling the applications for unemployment assistance.

The biggest job losses in December were in professional and business services, which fell by 15,000 during the month. The manufacturing sector lost 12,000 jobs, while the trade, transportation and utility sector lost 10,000 jobs during the month. Not a single industrial sector saw jobs gains during the month.

The picture was worse in the Detroit-Warren-Livonia labor market, the state’s largest, where unemployment for the month topped 11.1 percent in December, 1.1 percentage points higher than November and 3 full percentage points higher than December 2007.

The highest monthly unemployment rate registered in the state since the Great Depression of the 1930s (when jobless numbers were estimated since monthly statistics were not kept) hit 16.9 percent in November 1982.

That month, according to statistics from the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics, the state’s total workforce stood at 4.25 million with more than 719,000 people unemployed.

According to the SFA, unemployment topped 10 percent for six consecutive years from 1980-85, hitting an average of 15.6 percent in 1982.

Granholm was hopeful of quick action on a federal stimulus bill, and that the stimulus bill would be weighted to those states that have suffered more than others so far, but she also warned that even the stimulus bill would not be enough to completely turn the economy around nationally or in the state.

Littmann said the state should act quickly to cut taxes and regulation to help boost business development.

And Saul Anuzis, chair of the Michigan Republican Party, said the state’s economy has gone down for the six years Ms. Granholm has been in office. The state’s people want results, he said in a press release, and Granholm has failed to deliver.

In fact, the state’s economy began sliding after 2000, during the last two years of former Governor John Engler’s administration, after it reached its low of 3.8 percent in unemployment and the national economy went into a recession at that time.

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