Michigan's Creative Class

I loaned a former student the book, Rise of the Creative Class by Richard Florida. He's been reading it this summer, and sent me an email about a note I wrote in the margin regarding the need to balance social capital and economic growth. Here's part of my reply:

As for Richard Florida-- you have to remember that his ideas reflect trends, not absolutes. When he shows the percentages of workers in each type of career from one era to another, those are drawn in pretty broad strokes. Keep in mind that during the agricultural age, there were still some people working in manufacturing and in creative-class fields-- it was just that the balance among the types of work varied. There will always be manufacturing jobs, it is just that the creative class jobs are expected to have a greater influence in the overall economy than was the case, say, 20 years ago. The creative class will provide what might be called the "value-added" parts to the manufactured goods, like adding sophisticated software to a car to improve performance or add a desired function. (I just talked about that this evening with a neighbor who is an engineer for one of the car companies. He's working on software to adjust the way a prototype car "feels.") And a company like GM or Ford will still have both manufacturing and creative functions, as well as financial and sales-- even if they outsource some of the work. So, even within one company, you'll see technology and creative jobs and human service functions. I think you can have economic growth and growth in social capital from all kinds of jobs. It is just very disruptive when the changes in the current structure come all at once-- like in Michigan right now, where manufacturing is declining and changing very quickly. But, even with all of the manufacturing plants closing down around here, Chrysler and Lear are building new factories in Michigan, plants more suited to new methods. Ford just closed the Wixom plant, which was ranked the highest quality auto plant in the world last year-- perhaps they had to close it because it didn't meet the demands of modern manufacturing. I see Michigan changing to a creative-based economy at a very rapid pace right now, but that change is almost invisible amid the chaos caused by the massive decline in manufacturing jobs. Las Vegas is also having a terrible time right now as a region, but their losses are coming in the service sector instead of manufacturing. Both regions had lopsided economies. Michigan is making solid adjustments, but I'm not so sure about Nevada. I'm confident that Michigan will use the excellent institutions we built up over the last 100 years and the huge pool of creative talent we have (50,000 engineers in southeast Michigan alone) to make the switch. We need to keep the best of our manufacturing, take advantage of and nurture our creative class (engineering AND art!), develop a stronger service industry, and redevelop and diversify our agriculture to have a balanced economy and excellent quality of life.