Business Leaders for Michigan (BLM) is a business roundtable comprised of the chairpersons, chief executives, and senior executives from the largest job providers and universities in Michigan. BLM is dedicated to making Michigan a “Top Ten” state for job and economic growth. BLM retained AEG to estimate the economic footprint (or “scope”) of its member organizations in Michigan. AEG has analyzed the economic scope of BLM companies on a biennial basis since 2011.
We developed and submitted a survey to the member organizations. The survey asked for business data that included total sales, employment, payroll spending, non-payroll spending, and other items. For companies that did not complete the survey, we used industry-wide data, financial statements, and other third party sources to estimate missing data. We quantified the total direct output, household earnings, and employment associated with member businesses, and then multiplied these direct totals by U.S. Bureau of Economic Analysis RIMS II economic impact multipliers to determine the total direct and indirect economic scope of members.
We determined that, in 2017, BLM had 85 member organizations that employed over 465,000 Michiganders (approximately 11% of the state’s workforce). We also determined that average BLM employee compensation was $89,615 per year, which is 28% higher than the average U.S. private sector employee. The total economic scope of BLM members in 2017, including indirect impacts, was 1.1 million jobs and $71 billion in earnings statewide.
We provided this information to BLM in the memorandum linked below. BLM used this memorandum to inform policymakers about the organization.
View memorandum.