As voters mull their choices in November, the economy dominates their thoughts.

While it is doing well by most traditional measures, such as growth and unemployment, one metric dominates the mind of voters like Barbara Lawrence: the cost of food and everyday household i

The 72-year-old from Lansing is on a fixed income and has reduced her spending, eating out less and buying fewer Happy Meals for her grandchildren at McDonald’s and shopping around on car insurance.

“I never used to play that game,” she said. “But now $100 means something.”

In most elections, the economy is a huge issue. It could be a defining one this November in Michigan, which has ridden an economic roller-coaster for decades because of its manufacturing-reliant economy, pollster Richard Czuba told Bridge Michigan.

“But (now) in virtually every election we poll, the economy dominates the concerns,” he said.

Jobs, the economy and inflation, combined, were the top issues for 32% of residents in August, he said.

Abortion and women’s rights was No. 2 at 12.5%.

Unlike other elections dominated by angst over slowdowns, traditional economists say this economy is actually robust.

The state’s workforce, which has swelled in recent months, is at its largest since 2001 and still enjoying a relatively low jobless rate. Homeowners with mortgages locked in before 2022 have avoided the rising interest rates.

More than half of voters, 57%, in Czuba’s Glengariff Group poll say they are “satisfied” with their own financial situation.

“The economy is extremely strong,” said Stewart Beal of Beal Properties, an Ypsilanti-based landlord and property manager, “Business activity is very brisk. People are buying properties, selling properties, investing in properties. We’ve got construction projects going.”

What gives? Can the economy be both strong and weak at the same time?

Bridge Michigan takes a deeper look at a variety of statistics to map out why Michigan’s economy, like the nation’s, has many shades of gray.

Costs

One thing that no one can argue about: Things cost more. Mortgages. Rent. Cars. A trip to the grocery store confirms that point, from the deli counter to the produce section to the frozen-food coolers.

According to the U.S. Department of Agriculture, total food costs now consume roughly 11% of typical disposable income of families, the highest percentage since 1990, when George H.W. Bush was president.

Driving that increase was the rising cost of dining out, where restaurant workers have earned bigger pay raises, costs that hit the menu hard.

Grocery store prices are also way up, inflated by rising wages and transportation costs. Since 2020, bread is up 44%, a pound of chicken rose 41%, ground chuck was up 38% and a gallon of milk is up 24%.

Stop if this sounds familiar: Sarah Scott, 40, a mother of two in Grand Rapids, said she recently paid about $150 for groceries.

“I really didn’t get that much,” she said, adding that “I don’t even buy meat anymore.”

The price of other essentials also soared, but the increases are not solely related to inflation.

The price of a dozen eggs has more than doubled since 2020. The main culprit was two waves of the bird flu that devastated poultry flocks and sent prices soaring as millions of birds were euthanized.

The price of gas spiked following the onset of the Ukraine war, hitting $5 a gallon nationally in 2022, and has fluctuated since. It was down to $3.50 a gallon in August.

Housing has also taken a hit. The average rate on a 30-year mortgage jumped to nearly 7.9% a year ago, the highest rate since 2000. It’s fallen to about 6% but that’s well above the sub-3% rate in 2021.

For every $100,000 someone borrows now, they pay $665 a month in mortgage costs; up nearly 60% from the $422 with a 3% mortgage.

The cost of houses is up 40% since 2020, and the supply of listed for sale is at the lowest level in over a decade.

Rent in metro areas of Detroit, Grand Rapids, Lansing and Flint all jumped over 30% from 2019 to 2023, higher than the 30% it rose nationally, according to the real-estate marketplace company Zillow Group.

Jobs and earnings

Not all the news is dour.

More people are now working in Michigan, over 4.84 million, than at any point since 2001. The latest monthly unemployment rate is at 4.4%

After many were idled during the pandemic, employers raised wages to lure them back into the workforce following the worst of the pandemic or to keep quality workers who suddenly had lots of options.

That’s helped push wages up in almost every industry; median earnings for full-time workers are up 23% since 2017.

Beal, the landlord, said starting maintenance workers earned $16 an hour before the pandemic.

“Now a good person starts at $30 per hour,” Beal said, “and it’s the exact same person.”

Yet inflation wiped away most gains for average earners. The median earnings of a full-time worker in 2023 was $57,350, but that’s still nearly 2% or more than $800 less than the inflation-adjusted average earner in 2017.

But one group is more immune to the changes in Michigan: higher income residents.

The top 5% of households made more than $246,500 in 2023 in Michigan, a jump of $37,772 from 2019.

That’s an 18% increase, just slightly below the rate of inflation (19.1%) over the time. The bottom 60% did see incomes rise but each group saw a 2.4% to nearly 4% decline in buying power.l

An estimated 61% of people own stock, either directly or through mutual funds and retirement accounts. For many of those, the last four years have been very good, far better than low-interest bank savings accounts.

Since January 2020, the Dow Jones Industrial Average is up 48% while the tech-heavy NASDAQ Composite Index has nearly doubled. If someone had $100,000 split evenly between two funds indexed by those markets, they’d now have $173,500, a 74% increase.

But what happened in the United States did not happen here alone.

Other countries faced the same challenging supply chains and reacted with similar, though perhaps not as aggressive, stimulus packages to stave off massive unemployment.

That perspective and other economic metrics don’t make Scott feel much better. The Grand Rapids woman and her husband make more than $100,000 combined.

But they feel stuck by rising prices and child care costs, which tallies $300 per week for less than six hours of care for her two children.

“The economy is doing better,” she said. “(But) it’s not really reflected in our finances.”

In Lansing, Lawrence said she treated herself to a new car, though it’s still a three-year old SUV with 40,000 miles, trading in a 13-year-old Honda Accord.

She said she accepts that she has to avoid dinners out and other one-time luxuries.

But she said she knows she has to stay focused, to “make more (monetary) decisions. It’s being very myopic about what to spend your money on.”

“I was just surprised I had to keep thinking about it.”

— Paula Gardner contributed