SEMCOG, the Southeast Michigan Council of Governments, has released a new report titled Historical Population and Employment by Minor Civil Division, Southeast Michigan.
The report provides data on population from 1900-2020 and employment from 1970-2020.
Population Trends
After witnessing a rapid increase in population from 1900 to 1970, the region’s population growth slowed down substantially in the following decades.
- At the beginning of the 20th century, Wayne County was the population center, while a significant portion of people resided in the six more rural counties.
- By 2020, Oakland and Macomb Counties had joined Wayne to form an urbanized tri-county population center. The more rural counties held a smaller share of the region’s population, representing the shift from agrarian to urban living over the past 120 years.
- In the past 120 years of the region’s growth, cities and rural areas have taken turns in being desirable to residents seeking a better life in Southeast Michigan.
- Towards the end of the 20th century and into the beginning of the 21st century, the region saw the newest high-growth areas continuing to fill out the metropolitan region. The children of the baby boomer generation continued moving out of their childhood homes and into their own, closer to new sector job centers.
Employment Trends
- The Great Recession in 2009 and the decline in the domestic automotive industry – culminating with the bankruptcies of General Motors, Chrysler, and numerous suppliers – resulted in the region’s total employment bottoming out at 2.5 million jobs in the 2000s.
- This was a loss of almost 189,000 jobs, or 7%.
- The region recovered over the next decade, adding over 477,000 jobs (or 19%) for a total of nearly 3 million jobs by 2019. In 2020, the COVID-19 pandemic hit, and the region lost more than 266,000 jobs (9%), beginning the decade at 2.7 million jobs.
- The region rebounded quickly and now stands at just over three million jobs.
- Over the last 50 years, the region experienced a decentralization of employment.
- Employment redistributed from a handful of communities to many communities, as evidenced by the fact that the top 10 communities had 64.7% of the region’s employment in 1970, compared to 47.1% in 2000.
