Michigan Incentives Delivered 602 Jobs at $2.99 Million per Position

Michigan Economic Development Corporation programs awarded grants, tax credits, and loans between 2013 and 2023. Official tallies recorded 602 direct jobs against total outlays of $1.8 billion. The resulting cost per job exceeds typical manufacturing wage replacement multiples by a factor of 40. State audit documents show that 68 percent of awarded projects failed to meet employment targets within three years.

Comparable programs in Ohio and Wisconsin report similar shortfalls. Ohio's 2019-2022 incentive cohort produced 1,140 jobs from $1.1 billion, or $965,000 per job. A 2021 Upjohn Institute working paper found that refundable tax credits in the Great Lakes region generate employment elasticities below 0.05 when measured against county-level payroll data. Michigan's results fall within the same range.

The pattern indicates structural over-optimism in job-projection models used for legislative approval. No clawback provisions recovered more than 12 percent of disbursed funds in cases of non-performance. Future budgets continue to allocate $180 million annually to the same incentive categories without revised performance thresholds.

Operational consequence is continued diversion of general-fund revenue from infrastructure and education line items. Revised statutes requiring verified payroll data before disbursement would reduce future exposure by an estimated $120 million per biennium.