Advanced Industries in Michigan

The Brookings Institute released a report in February 2016 that profiled “advanced industries.” Per the Brookings definition, advanced industries have high employment of engineers and other STEM (science, technology, engineering, and mathematics) professionals and attract large research and design investments; these industries have been major drivers of employment growth in the United States’ recovery from the Great Recession. Advanced industries are broken into subsectors of advanced manufacturing, advanced services, and advance energy industries.

The Detroit metropolitan statistical area (MSA) – comprised of Wayne, Oakland, Macomb, Livingston, St. Clair, and Lapeer counties – ranked 4^th in the nation for advanced industry share of all jobs and 11^th for number of advanced industries jobs according to Brookings’ 2013 data. WIN partner, Ann Arbor SPARK, was, however, interested in how the region would compare to other communities across the nation if the Ann Arbor MSA were included within the Detroit area, as is a common practice for WIN’s multi-MSA data analysis. Using the same industry definitions, WIN analysis found that Ann Arbor’s advanced industry strengths are in advanced services as compared to Detroit’s advanced manufacturing, and that Ann Arbor advanced industry wages bring up regional wages, especially in advanced services industries.