In an era when jobs news is increasingly dominated by the drumbeat about the growth and prevalence of low-wage service-industry employment in the United States, my mental news filter lately keeps sifting up the M word — manufacturing.
A close-up look at robots in action. Photo: Micki Maynard
The notion of amping up the dwindling manufacturing jobs sector seems to be in the air lately, and the time may be ripe for a look at initiatives in your area (or lack therof) to bring back jobs that require moderate skill and education but provide a solid livelihood. (The evaporation or offshoring of such jobs, which allowed people not interested in, or suited for, advanced education to earn a robust living, is often cited as a contributor to the economic inequality of concern today.)
Last week, President Obama announced a new White House effort to stimulate public/private jobs creation efforts focused on manufacturing; the first of these ‘institutes’ will be in North Carolina and a variety of federal agencies will be involved in the high-tech focused effort. While some analysts say these manufacturing institutes aren’t likely to create a crtical mass of jobs, they do serve to showcase the sector.
Another bit of buzz: In December, the U.S. Congress Joint Economic Committee released a report on manufacturing jobs; its press release notes that about 500,000 have been created since 2010 and companies claim many more such posts are going unfilled. They say lack of qualified workers is the problem; labor advocates say employers’ reluctance to pay higher wages — or desire for lower-wage immigrant workers — is the cause. Both are areas to explore inyour market. Here’s a PDF of the entire 18-page brief; note the BLS industry-specific tables and some interesting source material in the bibliography.
As a resource, the reserach firm Manufacturers’ News publishes data on manufacturing jobs by state; perhaps they can supply even more detailed reports to journalists upon request.
A manufacturing plant in Lancaster, Pa. Photo by Flickr user haydnseek
Don’t overlook unions as a source of insight and information about manufacturing jobs and how these jobs may have evolved in recent years; you might find examples of union/industry/community college partnerships, for example, that train or re-train workers for factory or assembly jobs that now require computer know-how and other advanced skills.
As background, here’s a long but worth-reading Jan. 18 treatise from The Economist, “The Future of Jobs,” which explains the historical relationship of technology and productivity gains on employment, and how we might expect emerging technology to affect workers and occupations. It’s a fairly guarded outlook that does not bode well for the unskilled worker or the problem of income inquality. You might pose some of these conundrums to your area’s economic development units; what is the region overall (public, private, academic) doing to prepare current and future workers for a more entrepreneurial, skilled employment market?
Jobs repatriation — companies bringing back to the U.S. jobs they had shipped overseas — is a related issue that has cropped up a lot lately and a good one to localize. A recent report from the consulting firm Grant Thornton LLC says that “one-third of U.S. businesses will move goods and services work back to the United States in the next 12 months” and you’ll likely garner a lot of reader interest if you can identify any local examples. Here’s a Boston Globe opinion piece by an MIT researcher, “Made in the U.S.:
Photo: General Motors
Manufacturing moving onshore” that sketches an optimistic picture and also describes which industries are better suited to domestic manufacturing. A MarketWatch report from last fall says the trickle of repatriated jobs is being helped by low energy costs in the United States (attributed to fracking) and rising wages in emerging nations that make U.S. workers more competitives.
This whole topic is complicated by the implications of free trade agreements past and future; you might want to enlist academics from area universities to attempt an unbiased (if such a thing is possible) explanation of how NAFTA and other trade deals have affected your region. While you’re at it, ask about the pending and mysterious Trans Pacific Partnership (TPP) deal in the works and the ramifications for local workers and industries — the TPP increasingly is being criticized by pundits as detrimental both to jobs and the environment. Here is my recent blog post on the topic, with additional resources for reporters.
Source Article from http://businessjournalism.org/2014/01/22/ways-to-cover-manufacturing-gains-2014/
