The Detroit Region economy employs over 2.6 million workers. Economic growth from 2015-2025 provided almost 77,000 net new jobs spread across a range of occupational types.

The occupation group with the largest growth was Management occupations which added almost 47,000 new jobs in the region, this was closely followed by Transportation and Material Moving occupations and Business and Financial Operations occupations which added almost 44,000 jobs and 33,000 jobs respectively.

From 2015 to 2025, the unemployment rate in the Detroit Region has generally followed the national trend. In 2019, the rate of unemployment fell to 4.2%, a level not seen since the early 2000s. The region’s unemployment rate then peaked at 11% in 2020 due to the pandemic but has since returned to pre-pandemic levels and was at about 5% in 2025.

In addition to the existing educated workforce, employers find a large workforce pipeline from numerous colleges and universities throughout the region. The number of students graduating from these institutions has hovered around 65,000 students for the past few years (2020 to 2024).

After experiencing declining college enrollments for most of the last decade, 2024 brought a slight increase of enrollment for the first time since 2015. Enrollment increased by 7,600 between 2023 and 2024 – a good sign for the workforce pipeline in the region.