MSU Study: Michigan Residents More Positive About Economy

Michigan residents are growing more positive about the economy, and the state’s governor is benefiting from the sunnier outlook, says a new Michigan State University State of the State Survey released today.

In this latest survey, Michigan residents gave the economy its highest marks since 2005, as 54 percent of those responding called their current financial situation excellent or good. Fewer than 30 percent called their circumstances “just fair,” 10.1 percent rated their conditions “not so good” and 6.6 percent considered their circumstances “poor.”

“The Michigan economy has added 150,000 jobs since the job market bottomed out at the end of 2009,” said Charles Ballard, MSU economics professor and director of the State of the State Survey. “The improvement in the economy is reflected in the brighter mood in our latest survey.”

The findings are based on the latest quarterly phone survey conducted from Feb. 14 to April 15. A total of 963 Michigan adults were questioned in the survey which has an error rating of +3.16 percent.

In the fall 2011 survey, conducted from mid-September through early November, only 46.2 percent of those answering the survey called their financial situation “excellent” or “good.”

About 37 percent of the Michigan residents who responded to the survey also said they believed they were better off in 2012 than they were the year before. Those are the highest ratings since 2005. 

They were also upbeat about the year ahead, making this the rosiest forecast since 2004, Ballard said. Fully 61 percent of the survey respondents expect to be better off a year from now.

Gov. Rick Snyder’s approval ratings rebounded substantially this spring.

“The governor’s ratings went from 19.3 percent positive last fall to 33 percent in the current survey,” Ballard said. “This is a very substantial improvement.”

President Obama’s positive ratings remained about the same as before, Ballard said.

In the most recent period, 40.6 percent of those responding to the survey gave the president “excellent” or “good” marks. Michigan residents gave Obama 70.7 percent positive rating as the new president began his term in 2009, but his ratings declined steadily since his first year in office.

For more information about the State of the State Survey, see www.ippsr.msu.edu/SOSS/. The full presentation can be seen at www.ippsr.msu.edu.

MSU’s State of the State Survey has been conducted by the Institute for Public Policy and Social Research since 1994, and is a project of IPPSR’s Office for Survey Research. IPPSR is a unit of MSU’s College of Social Science.

(This press release was submitted by Michigan State University.)