Last week I found myself at dinner with a group of bright, enthusiastic young people, all just about to graduate from college. They had stars in their eyes about their future -- and, plainly, the skills and energy to reach those stars.

But every last one of them is planning on leaving Michigan.

Why? In search of a career. Some were going to New York, others to Chicago, and a couple to the West Coast.

"How come?" I asked.

What they told me went pretty much like this. "It isn't that Michigan is such a bad place. We grew up here, and we love it here. But there are just no good jobs now. We can't afford to risk our future by starting our careers in a place that seems to be sliding downhill."

Bad enough that Pfizer, Inc. is closing its research lab in Ann Arbor and Comerica, after 150 years in Detroit, is moving its headquarters to Dallas. But to hear the next generation's best and brightest talk about leaving the Michigan they love because they don't see much opportunity is terribly distressing.

Then, over the weekend I received an email note from an old friend who founded a very successful consulting firm. He is not about to move himself or his firm out of Michigan, but he has some interesting insights into those who do:

"What rings truest about Comerica moving is how difficult companies find it to attract talented people to come to Michigan to work, especially Metro Detroit.

"While those of us who are lifers think quality of life is very good here, the pervasiveness of external perception is very strong: Michigan is not a magnet for talent." Changing that perception, he went on,  is the key to a successful future.

Whoever the wise person was who said our demography writes our history was right. And if there is any consensus as to how Michigan is going to get out of the economic pickle we're in, it's this:

That finding, attracting, nurturing and retaining talent is the single most important thing we can do. It's more important than any particular whiz- bang, silver bullet economic policy.

It's even more important than our collective culture, which at present is far too entitlement-driven ('where's my benefits?') and too unwilling to take risks. Talent is the key to Michigan having a future.

And what is deeply worrying is that we may be approaching a tipping point, where our most talented automatically feel they have no other choice than to consider leaving the place they love because they simply cannot find good jobs with a future here.

For some years now, I've watched the children of my friends graduate from college and move away. It's bothered me, but I've always figured that after they've sowed their wild oats in the fleshpots of the big cities and started a family, they'll come back home.

And in fact, many of them have -- for many good reasons.

The cost of living in Michigan is far, far below other more fashionable places. A journalist friend reached a summit of our trade by getting a job at the Chicago Tribune some years ago, but pretty soon he realized his paycheck was getting eaten away by expensive rent in a small apartment and the costs of raising a family in the big city. He moved back to Michigan.

I hear lots of stories like that.

The cost of living is low in Nebraska, too.  But the quality of life here is unparalleled. Where else in the country can you live a couple of hours away from some of the greatest trout fishing in the world or the whispering pines on the Great Lakes shores?

Where else can you enjoy world-class art and music and sports and entertainment without having to drop hundreds of dollars?

Where else is the civic culture relatively sane and moderate, neither hard right nor hard left as it can be in other regions?  Michigan is in the center of the country, and we're centrist and sensible in the ways we go about things.

And besides, we've got water (listen up, Comerica managers!)  and when the ice cap slips off Greenland and raises the level of the Atlantic Ocean by 21 feet, it's a comforting feeling to know we're 700 feet or so above sea level.

It may take a few years for the rest of the world to cotton on to all this. In the meantime, perhaps the state of Michigan might think of running an ad campaign about folks who have stayed and thrived as a result.  We could also let people know about the good jobs that are going begging right here -- and yes, there are some of those.

We're urging out-of-state businesses to locate here, which is perfectly fine. But when our greatest resources of all -- our talented young people -- are choosing to leave, we'd do well to begin by selling them on our future.

We need to sell them on what we've got to offer internally before we can convince the outside world, and we need to do so soon, before a steady trickle of young career professionals going elsewhere turns into an unstoppable flood.

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Phil Power is a longtime observer of politics, economics and education issues in Michigan. He would be pleased to hear from readers at ppower@hcnnet.com. Phil Power is president of the Center for Michigan. However, these opinions and others expressed in Phil Power's columns are individual opinions and do not in any way represent official policy positions of the Center for Michigan.