Granholm Predicted 62,000 Michigan Battery Jobs — There's Less Than 1,800

The U.S. Senate Committee on Energy held a hearing in January on the nomination of former Michigan Gov. Jennifer Granholm to become the U.S. secretary of energy. At the hearing, Granholm made a number of dubious statements about her track record on creating jobs in Michigan. Here is one of them:

“I’m really proud actually of my record in Michigan in terms of seeding the area for battery technology,” Granholm said at the Jan. 27 hearing.

There were 40,654 battery manufacturing jobs in the U.S. in 2019, according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics. Michigan accounted for 1,751 of them, or 4.3%.

The figure includes jobs in manufacturing all types of batteries, not just those made for electric vehicles. That classification also includes small batteries, such as those used for watches, transistor radios and flashlights.

In September 2010, Granholm set the bar much higher when she predicted the number of jobs that would flow from the many subsidies she authorized for battery makers. In a conversation with the one of those company’s CEO, LG Chem’s Peter Kim, she said the following:

“During our meeting, Mr. Kim remarked that Michigan is becoming a world capital for advanced batteries,” Granholm said, according to a state press release. “We now have 16 advanced battery companies building facilities in Michigan and hiring people in Michigan, representing $5.8 billion in capital investment and projected to create almost 62,000 new jobs.”