Axios

Michigan governor Rick Snyder signed into law last week corporate tax credits that would enable companies to forgo paying all state income taxes for up to ten years if a company hires a certain number of workers paying "good" wages.

• But Crain's Detroit Business points out many questions remain whether the law will actually create middle-class jobs and whether the tax incentives will be efficiently spent.
• The law requires companies to, on average, pay a wage that is at or above the average wage in the region where the company employs workers. But critics argue this risks giving companies tax credits for hiring they'd do anyway, and also that companies can get the tax breaks by hiring just a few high-paid executives and many low-paid frontline workers.
• Why it matters: States like Michigan are desperate for policies that result in good-paying jobs, but must remain vigilant that programs aren't easily abused.

Corporate America has fallen back in love with big cities, where a growing list of name firms like GE and McDonald's have announced they are moving their headquarters from the burbs.

• Large companies want to be downtown because that's where the most talented younger workers want to be, making corporate, urban migration another auspicious trend for America's big cities, along with falling crime rates and expanding tax bases.
• But according to the Manhattan Institute's Aaron Renn, the benefits of corporate America's rekindled urban interest is going by and large to just a few of America's most powerful economic centers, like New York, Boston, and Chicago, while the attempted comebacks of St. Louis and Cincinnati are much more precarious. Indianapolis (see after the jump) may be an exception for the second-tier cities.
• Why it matters: Renn points to data showing that just six cities grabbed three-fourths of all U.S. downtown job growth between 2010 and 2013, suggesting that the go-urban strategy to attract the best talent is appealing in only certain cities and for certain businesses.

A slew of reports finds a fresh reason for the chronic inability of American companies to fill skilled jobs: not a lack of skills, and hence a training-and-education crisis, but a surfeit of drug abuse, per the NYT's Nelson Schwartz. Simply put, prime-working age Americans without a college diploma are often too drugged-out to get the best jobs. Opioids remain at high levels, but the surge in drug use is now heroin and the powerful contaminant fentanyl.

The reports suggest a circularity to the crisis in America's rust and manufacturing belts: the loss of jobs and wage stagnation has led to widespread disaffection, alienation and drug abuse; and drug abuse has led to joblessness, hopelessness and disaffection.

But the numbers are all over the map. Some employers and economists say up to half of job applicants do not clear drug tests; others say it is 25%. In the chart above, Indeed economist Jed Kolko, using data from the U.S. Current Population Survey, found that 5.6% to 5.7% of working-age adults didn't work last year because of illness or disability, an unknown percentage of which were because of drug use.

From the first, Americans have been on the move in "Great Migrations" for a better life, like those of the last century that saw poor blacks and whites go from the south for higher-paying work in northern cities. But no longer. Starting around 1980, working class Americans have largely stood still, and a primary reason is real estate prices, according to new research.

In a new paper, the University of Chicago's Peter Ganong and Daniel Shoag say high rent in America's most economically vibrant areas make these moves a money loser for lower-skilled workers.

Why it matters: Their relative immobility stunts a historical trend in which lower-skill American workers have climbed the income ladder. It's one reason for the decades of stagnant income documented across the West by economists.