As an aside, Time Magazine is doing an interesting series on the decline and fall of Detroit - it's probably a worthy read for all involved, as it looks like they're doing a pretty good job.
Starts here.
And an interesting way to look at growth, from a blog post outlining the most recent unemployment figures:
Quote:
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In 2000 the total private sector employment in the United States was 110,798,000; by August 2009 this number had dropped to 109,540,000 -- a net loss of 1,258,000 jobs nation-wide. This is a 1.1% drop. In 2000 the number of private sector jobs in Michigan was 3,996,000; this number dropped to 3,213,000 by August 2009 -- a drop of 783,000 jobs (19.6%). This is a shocking number -- one out of five jobs in Michigan has disappeared since 2000.
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Additionally, you can look at it like this: since 2000, about 60% of all job loss has been concentrated in Michigan. Of course, this ignores the large amounts of job growth that took place from 2000-2006ish around most of the country - but it's still a useful exercise. In many ways, this is a single-state depression amidst a nation-wide recession.
We can go around and around about why it happened, but that's a pretty stark number - again, though, that number happened for a reason, because of decisions that were made and trends that were ignored, mismanaged or misread. It's sad all around, and important to look at seriously and objectively, to keep it from happening in other places/industries.