Dr. Kenneth Harris, president/CEO of the National Business League, told the Chronicle that one-half of the Black-owned companies in Detroit are blue-collar industries, as the ones mentioned above.
The recent mass-hiring drives by Amazon and McDonald’s in the city created something of a recruitment bubble in the midst of those same corporations laying off their tech and other white-collar workers.
The uptick in blue-collar jobs in Detroit is in line with the larger national pattern. Part of this is the ongoing shedding of tech jobs, which is making people reconsider manufacturing and other manual work for stability, both in terms of the duration of the work and the paycheck. Another factor is that the Biden administration has made a concerted effort to create such wage-earning jobs in areas like infrastructure.
Detroit’s infrastructure boom comes from the substantial…
