By WKTV Staff
joanne@wktv.org
Now two years into a three-year strategic plan and The Right Place, Inc is on track to exceed all of its goals.
This month, the regional nonprofit dedicated to economic prosperity in West Michigan, hosted its 25th annual Economic Outlook which showed that The Right Place was doing well on meeting its targets for the three-year period from 2020-2022.
For 2021, the organization reports that its work has resulted in 1,541 new and retained jobs, $84 million in new and retained payroll, and $286 million new capital investment.
The Right Place President and CEO Randy Thelen said that due to COVID-19 and its impact on the economy in 2020, the organization was behind the curve in terms of its objects of new and retained jobs, new and retained payroll, and new capital investment. Because of bold decisions made by the business community in 2021, The Right Place is now ahead of its three-year statistic plan.
Over the past two years, the organization has achieved 2,494 new and retained jobs, which is 74 percent of its goal of 3,400 in the three year period. For new and retained payroll, it has achieved $127 million which is 69 percent of its three-year goal of $184 million. For new capital investment, The Right Place, Inc. has achieved $286 million completing 79 percent of its three-year goal of $500 million.
The bigger question for many is what to expect in 2022. The Right Place meet with 422 companies and from those conversations, learned the local business community is confident in the region’s future. The overwhelming majority believe the region is competitive (94 percent) and more than half are planning to expand in the near future (63 percent). The positive outlook comes despite the labor shortage and ongoing pandemic with many making investments into training (52 percent).
Labor shortages continue to be a concern with the pandemic magnified the barriers for some, such as childcare. According to a recent CNN article, the biggest impact on the labor shortage is not due to people relying on government aid but because of early retirement. The overall labor force participation rate is falling, birth rates are down and boomers are retiring fast. Labor demands are 60 percent high than they were pre-COVID, according to The Right Place.
It should be noted that pre-pandemic unemployment rate in the U.S. was the lowest since 1969. In fact, the unemployment rate today is lower than it was in any month between March 1970 and February 1999 and for any month between March 2001 and August 2017.
According to The Right Place officials, where the economy is falling short is the number of jobs and the number of people in the labor force. In the U.S., there are 2.6 percent fewer jobs today than there were in February 2020 and in Michigan there are 5.1 percent fewer jobs than in February 2020. The unemployment rate would be much higher except for the fact that many of the formerly employed workers have dropped out of the labor force, which is down by 1.5 percent in the U.S. and 3.4 percent in Michigan since February 2020.
The imbalance between demand, which is higher than before the pandemic, and supply, especially labor supply, which is lower than it was before the pandemic is generating increases in prices. Consumer prices in the U.S. were 6.2 percent hight in October then a year earlier and prices in Michigan, measured by the Detroit CPI, are 5.5 percent higher than a year ago. The real disposable personal income per capita in the U.S. in October was 1.7 percent higher than it was before the pandemic in February 2020 and the average new wroth of American households, adjusted for inflation, increased 17.5 percent from the fourth quarter of 2019 to the second quarter of 2021.
To check out the full strategic plan from The Right Place, click here.
