EAST LANSING – The emphasis on attracting high-skill jobs that require high-caliber education is leaving students who are capable of working important, quality jobs stuck with thinking that their choice in life is either to become a brain surgeon or working a low-skill service job, author and futurist Joel Kotkin said Tuesday.

Speaking at the Michigan Chamber of Commerce’s annual Future Forum, Kotkin said the emphasis on having more high school students go on to complete four-year college degrees and then postgraduate work is problematic. There is not a need for more attorneys, but a need for people capable of making and fixing things as people working in those professions age and retire.

“I’m worried more about those people who maybe aren’t at the very top and yet could be very valuable to society,” he said.

A mistake states are making is trying to attract new residents instead of trying to lift those already living there and struggling, Kotkin said.

Kotkin is the author of “The Next Hundred Million: America in 2050.” A resident of the Los Angeles area, Kotkin has studied demographic and economic trends for decades.

Michigan has several advantages in the future economy, Kotkin said. The way for the nation to pull out of its economic struggles is through production of goods and manufacturing, and that is Michigan’s specialty, he said.

Michigan also has abundant arable land and water, two things in much smaller supply in other growing nations around the world. Kotkin projected that China’s labor force would begin shrinking about 2030 as a result of the lack of water restraining its economic growth as well as China’s one-child policy and the ability of many couples to screen so their child is a boy.

“Down the road, water will become a very big factor in economic growth,” he said.

Kotkin said the gloom and doom about China’s ascendancy echoes similar projections about Japan from 20-25 years ago that did not pan out.

And Michigan’s agricultural strength will position it well too as other countries run out of arable land and water. Critics who say the United States is in the same situation are sorely misinformed, Kotkin said.

“Agriculture I believe will be the critical strategic industry of the 21st Century,” he said.

Michigan also has the advantage of affordability, Kotkin said.

A couple in California looking to retire could sell their $800,000 house, buy a comparable home for $250,000 in Michigan and put that profit toward their retirement. Kotkin called such people “equity refugees.”

One reason Texas is growing so rapidly is it combines affordability with abundant job opportunities. And that is the rub in Michigan: It must create an economic environment more conducive to job growth so that there are more job opportunities.

Kotkin said Governor Rick Snyder and the Legislature are taking steps in that direction.

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