GRAND RAPIDS — Regional economic development organization The Right Place, Inc. recently hosted its Economic Outlook for 2026 for the Greater Grand Rapids Region, the state of Michigan and a national outlook. The event featured a state of the region presentation by The Right Place, Inc. President and CEO Randy Thelen, a national forecast by Fifth Third Bank Managing Director and Chief Economist Jeff Korzenik, and a state forecast by W.E. Upjohn Institute President Michael Horrigan.
“Greater Grand Rapids continues to grow, fueled by young talent and an increasingly diverse community,” Thelen said. “Our region remains competitive across our key industries while offering a more affordable cost of living than many comparable markets nationwide. But there’s more to do. We need to keep pushing forward with a growth mindset to ensure long-term prosperity for our region.”
2025 Right Place Accomplishments
In 2025, work done by The Right Place resulted in:
- Facilitating 19 business expansion and attraction projects.
- Collaborating with our partner counties with events and job creation.
- Conducting 600 business retention visits.
- Hosting more than 15,000 Tech Week attendees and a sold-out Tech Week Kickoff featuring Apple co-founder Steve Wozniak
- Hosting a sold-out Developer Day with 200+ developers and construction firms.
- Hosting a sold-out Place Matters Summit.
- Hosting six Talent Learning Labs for HR and talent professionals.
- Hosting a sold-out Go Beyond for women in tech.
- Hosting numerous events for its four industry councils (Supply Chain Management Council, Tech Council, Manufacturing Council, and MiDevice) and one cross-council event to facilitate more connections between regional businesses
- Supporting over 650 interns representing 114 universities and 84 companies at Hello West Michigan’s Intern Connect event.
- Publishing four industry research reports: State of the Region, Tech Report, Development Report and Manufacturing Report
During his presentation, Thelen expounded upon The Right Place’s 600 business retention visits. These meetings allowed staff to learn more about existing businesses and engage in dialogue to help ensure their prosperity in the region. The Right Place is often known for helping recruit businesses to the region, but as the figure shows, most of its work is helping existing businesses to grow.
Statewide indicators
In 2014, there were 146 million people in the economy working (nationally). In 2024 that number had risen to 161 million. The average monthly change from 2012-2022 in Michigan was 1,992. The state of Michigan official projections estimate that the average monthly change from 2022-2032 will be 208.
“I was on a panel a few months ago where when I gave that slide, somebody said, well, we’re just going to have to be accustomed to lower growth,” Horrigan said. “And my answer was absolutely not. The population of developing countries is growing like gangbusters. There’s an export market that’s going to be very, very important for the U.S. economy and for the Grand Rapids economy.
“Now, I know we’re having a big debate about the nature of international trade and tariffs,” he added. “But I think with the population that goes to developing countries, plus the fact that we want more stuff here — we want the iPhone 45 or whatever — it’s going to be in 10 years that there’s a demand for more and more stuff to be made.”
The trick, Horrigan pointed out, is making it with a more slowly growing population with a more slowly growing employment pool?
“We’ve done it already,” Horrigan said. “Manufacturing output in real terms has been growing despite the fact that employment and manufacturing on a relative basis has been falling. Now, this doesn’t include gig workers or temporary health supply, but generally this is the trend here, right? In other words, we’ve known in the past how to produce more with fewer people, and now that the reality of demographics is coming at it, we’re going to have to do it again, but we’re going to have to do it across all industries.”
Among other topics, Horrigan pointed out that AI is becoming more important in nearly all occupations. The idea that AI is going to cost jobs, he said, is a misnomer. The idea that 90% of our jobs or 80% of our jobs are going to be eliminated by AI is “completely misleading.”
“I think what’s going to happen realistically is we’re going to have a change in the capital labor ratio,” Horrigan said. “The number of legal assistants we need in our law firms is going to fall, but we’ll still need legal assistants working with AI. And I think for all of these occupations … they use automation, they use AI or will use AI as a tool.
“But I think the challenge for all of us is, to really understand the impact of AI, we have to dive deep into those occupations to really talk to people who are in those who are thinking about those occupations and how they’re going to change.”
The national picture
A big topic when talking about the national economic landscape is, of course, tariffs. According to Fifth Third’s Korzenik, tariffs have “obviously taken a toll on the economy.” He said the biggest toll is not the actual level of tariffs, but the “incredible uncertainty” surrounding them.
He pointed out that has essentially frozen business activity in many ways.
“You’ll see there’s a correlation between business uncertainty and the mention of tariffs on earnings calls,” Kotrzernik said. “So obviously the more we talk about tariffs the less certain the business community has been. What we are encouraged by … is the fact that this relationship seems to be breaking a little bit and that, although tariff uncertainty continues and is likely to continue … we think the base case should probably be the Supreme Court’s ruling on whether the president exceeded his authority in most cases imposing these tariffs.”
The administration has signalled that, even if the SCOTUS rules against them, they’ll pivot to other kinds of tariff authorities. The good news, he said, is that the business community is adjusting.
“The business community is moving past that and this uncertainty has become, instead of something that freezes activity and freezes decision-making, has become something that is just one more point of uncertainty that we all have to deal with in the business community and we can move forward,” he said. “We still have to move our businesses forward. We still have to hire, we have to put deals together, we have to invest. That I think is a hopeful sign that the worst is behind us, even though the uncertainty will continue.”
Korzenik also touched on what the administration calls its “One Big, Beautiful Bill, which he said the fact that it did not allow for the sun setting of various tax breaks in the 2017 Tax Act to expire, or at least prevent it, is the “most important facet” of the bill.
“Much of that impact that would’ve been a pretty big pill to swallow in terms of all the effective tax increases we would’ve had,” he said. “But there are other provisions as well to the tax bill that we think will be supportive of the economy in the year ahead.”
State of the Region Report
After highlighting Right Place’s accomplishments, Thelen walked the crowd through its fourth annual State of the Region report. This report is designed to inform the community of key trends impacting the region. It is the result of quantitative and qualitative insights from The Right Place’s economic development work across its 7-county collaborative and economic research performed by its Business Intelligence team. Key 2025 statistics from The Right Place’s State of the Region report include:
People
- 6.2% population growth over the last decade.
- 70.3% of the region’s population in the past year comprised diverse communities.
- 37% have a bachelor’s degree or higher.
- 25% of population is 19 or younger.
Place
- 3.1% industrial vacancy rate (compared to 7.6% nationally; lowest among top 50 markets).
- 1.4M SF of industrial space under construction.
- The region’s cost of living index is 7 points below the national average (92.6 vs 100).
- 86,000 more air travelers in the first 3 quarters of 2025 compared to 2024.
Prosperity
- Between 603,000 and 605,000 jobs in Greater Grand Rapids in 2025 (data only available through August).
- 1,300 new tech jobs were added in 2025 (nearly 41,000 in total).
- 65% of companies report increased sales. (+6.6% from 2024)
- 43% of companies plan to increase hiring. (-4.4% from 2024)
- 46% of companies plan to expand. (-11.5% from 2024)
- 24% of companies expressed issues with new employee recruiting (-22.6% from 2024)
Three-Year Strategic Plan Results
Thelen also provided an update on the organization’s progress toward the final year of the 2023-2025 strategic plan. A new 3-year plan will be announced in early 2026. Click hereto read the entire current strategic plan. Over the course of the last 3 years, the organization’s work has resulted in:
- 4,153 new and retained jobs against a 3-year goal of 4,000 new and retained jobs.
- $844.2M in new capital investment against a 3-year goal of $550M.
- $487.2M in community development against a 3-year goal of $100M.
- $30.90 average hourly wage against a 3-year goal of $26.50 average wage. (This wage goal refers to the hourly rate of jobs created/retained within projects that The Right Place directly works on in its 7-county coverage region.)
