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"I wonder what it would be like to live in a world where it was always June."
—L. M. Montgomery
Michigan, my home state, is a special place.
Established in 1805, Michigan is bordered by Lake Michigan, Lake Superior, Lake Huron, Lake Erie, and is connected to Lake Ontario through the flow of water in the Great Lakes system.
"The Great Lakes State," as it's sometimes called, is a "water, winter, wonderland" of recreation and outdoor activities like swimming, boating, fishing, and hunting. Snowmobiling is a big deal with the fifth-largest snowmobile trail in the nation, worth a billion dollars to Michigan's economy, especially in the Upper Peninsula.
While the "Mitten State' has struggled with population loss, it recently experienced a rare net gain in domestic migration. Michigan's population grew for the fourth consecutive year to 10,127,884 as of July 2025, adding approximately 27,922 people according to the state's official website.
"Despite this, Michigan faces long-term challenges from an aging population and low birth rates, with long-term projections indicating a slow decline to about 9.9 million by 2050," say government analysts.
Motor City
Detroit's Big Three automakers (General Motors, Ford Motor Company, and Stellantis, formerly Chrysler) have created the middle class by providing high-wage, blue-collar jobs with strong benefits such as pensions and healthcare. GM made a college education possible for me through a summer clerkship at Chevrolet Motor Division in Flint.
Tens of billions are being invested in plants and new technology in the state. However, more dollars are going elsewhere to reduce labor and logistics costs, access new talent pools, and build near-regional customer bases, according to Bridge Michigan. The New York Times reports that Michigan has roughly 280,000 fewer auto jobs than it had in the 1950s, a 60% decline.
General Motors, Ford, and Stellantis combined have cut 20,000 salaried positions, a reduction of about 19% of their white-collar workforce from recent peaks.
This cyclical industry has undergone many changes in the past 100 years. And more are on the way. The threat of low-cost, government-subsidized vehicles from China entering U.S. markets is becoming more real, though it's held at bay by 100% tariffs and U.S. security concerns.
Bipartisan legislation is beginning to work its way through Congress to ban the import, manufacture, and sale of internet-connected vehicles, software, and hardware linked to China or other adversaries.
AI is changing the way vehicles are developed, produced, sold, and driven.
In addition to the Big Three automakers, Michigan has 16 headquartered companies on the Fortune 500 list. They include Dow, Inc., Penske Automotive Group, Stryker Corp., and Whirlpool.
More than manufacturing
Michigan is an agricultural powerhouse, according to the Michigan Economic Development Commission. "It ranks as the second most diverse state in the U.S. for agriculture," says the Commission. Contributing over $125 billion annually, it's the state's second largest industry, producing more than 300 commodities and ranking #1 in tart cherries, asparagus, and black beans.
There are 93 colleges and universities in Michigan listed under the Carnegie Classification of Institutions of Higher Education. This includes 15 public universities, 28 public community colleges, and a variety of private non-profit and for-profit institutions.
In 2024, 51.6% of Michigan residents ages 25-64 held a certificate, an associate degree, a bachelor's degree, a graduate degree, or a professional degree, according to the Lumina Foundation. When looking specifically at bachelor's degrees or higher, approximately 32.4% of people ages 25 and older hold this qualification, based on U.S. Census Bureau data.
The University of Michigan, in Ann Arbor, is the state's oldest university, founded in 1817. The school, with $2 billion in research volume, is also the current Big Ten and NCAA Division I men's basketball champion.
Professional sports teams such as the Detroit Tigers, Lions, Pistons, Red Wings, and Detroit City FC (a soccer team nicknamed the "La Rouge") try to keep fans engaged year-round.
Is there a Michigan accent? Yes, it's called "Inland North" or "Great Lakes." The Detroit Free Press says that if you call it "pop" instead of "soda" or vacation at Mack-in-awe (Mackinac), or visit Sue Saint Marie (Sault Ste. Marie), you're likely a true Michigander. Going Up North for the weekend also qualifies.
While traditional Michigan speech is starting to disappear among younger generations, CBS Detroit claims the hallmark Michigan vocabulary remains strong across the state.
Speaking of unique Michigan sounds. Musical historians tell us that Motown Records was founded by Barry Gordy in January of 1959 with an $800 loan from his family. That was the beginning of a cultural movement, not just a record label.
From 1961 to 1971, the label, featuring artists such as Stevie Wonder, The Temptations, and Diana Ross & The Supremes, had 110 Billboard Top Ten hits, according to news reports.
Tourism and weather
Maybe you're familiar with the state's marketing campaign — Pure Michigan — which was launched 20 years ago. It was named one of the top ten all-time travel campaigns by Forbes.
A state with an Upper and Lower Peninsula means there's a lot of ground to cover when sightseeing or vacationing (97,000 square miles of land and water). Sleeping Bear Dunes, Pictured Rocks, and Tahquamenon Falls are favorites. M-22 is a 116-mile scenic highway that follows the Lake Michigan shoreline around the Leelanau Peninsula.
The Wall Street Journal's number-one-rated but least-visited national park, Isle Royale, is not to be missed. A forty-five-mile-long island that is ten times the size of Manhattan and the only island in the U.S. National Park system, Isle Royale lies in the northwest part of Lake Superior.
Home to wolves, bears, foxes, and moose, the main island, along with 450 smaller islands and the surrounding waters, makes up Isle Royale National Park. This outdoor experience, which is closed November 1 through April 15 due to extreme weather conditions, is a three-hour ferry boat ride from Copper Harbor or a 50-minute flight from Houghton.
Mackinac Island (the French spelling) offers a unique car-free atmosphere (cars have been banned since 1895), where travel is limited to bicycles, carriages, and walking. The island's marketing reminds everyone that "you are pausing time in the 19th century." It's a national landmark with 80% of its land preserved as a state park.
Michigan is filled with rivers, spring-fed lakes, and freshwater seas.
MLive writer Emily Bingham provides a look at water facts from the Michigan Department of Natural Resources:
- You are never more than six miles from a body of water.
- You are never more than 85 miles from a Great Lake.
- There are more than 11,000 inland lakes. (Sorry, Minnesota.) The three largest are Houghton Lake, Torch Lake, and Lake Charlevoix.
- There are 3,288 miles of Great Lakes shoreline.
Here's what the Michigan Storm Chasers say about the weather: "While it features distinct winter, spring, summer, and fall, the weather is notorious for rapid, unpredictable changes, often allowing residents to experience all four seasons in a single week or even a single day."
Forces of nature
In the current best-seller, The Gales of November, author John U. Bacon details the sinking of the SS Edmund Fitzgerald, a 13,000-ton freighter that sank on November 10, 1975, disappearing from radar at 7:15 p.m.
Twenty-nine crew members lost their lives in one of the fiercest storms ever to hit Lake Superior, which has a maximum depth of 1,332 feet, according to the Great Lakes Commission. Waves that day were at 25 to 35 feet high, with hurricane-force wind gusts of 85 miles per hour.
Bacon writes that the storm was so far-reaching and powerful that it made the Mackinac Bridge, eighty miles south of the Fitzgerald's location at Whitefish Bay, "sway thirty-five feet side to side, like a snake slithering through the grass."
The vessel lies north-northwest of Whitefish Point, Michigan, in Canadian waters at a depth of 500 feet, equivalent to a 50-story building.
Gordon Lightfoot memorialized the tragedy in his 1976 ballad, "The Wreck of the Edmund Fitzgerald." Lake Superior is so cold (average temperatures of 30 degrees Fahrenheit) that bacteria can't grow, so instead of floating, corpses sink. The song reminds us that the world's largest freshwater lake by surface area never gives up its dead.
As someone said, "There's nothing as silent as the bottom of the sea."
A peninsula in transition
The upper part of the Lower Peninsula was a favorite getaway of American novelist and short-story writer Ernest Hemingway. It's reported that Hemingway, a Pulitzer and Nobel prize-winning author, enjoyed walking the streets of Petoskey (unnoticed) and fishing at Walloon Lake, where his family owned a summer home, "Windemere," now a National Historic Landmark.
"The cider tasted like Michigan, too. I always remembered the cider mill," Hemingway recalled.
In 1914, Russian-born American composer Irving Berlin wrote a popular song about the state, "I Want to Go Back to Michigan." Anyone returning now would find a pleasant peninsula in the process of determining its political and economic future.
Together with longer-term population trends, the greatest challenge may be public education, where facilities are aging, test scores are falling, and enrollment is declining in many districts. That poses a predicament, as a strong educational infrastructure is a primary driver of corporate site selection.
The nature of the seasons is changing, too, even as calendars remain the same. Spring is welcome after a long, cold winter, but it's often wet and stormy. Flooding in northern Michigan recently washed away the Tunnel of Trees roadway on Michigan Highway 119.
Peak foliage in autumn is arriving later, although with unmatched colors and picturesque drives. This might be the best time of the year.
Though Michigan summers go by quickly from Memorial Day to Labor Day and are becoming noticeably warmer, they are still enjoyable and hard to beat.
Strategist.com
© Bredholt & Co.
