Report Shows Optimism For Manufacturing In Mass.
A new report out today shows optimism for the manufacturing industry in Massachusetts, which has shown significant growth since 2009.
In the first Report Card on Manufacturing by the Kitty and Michael Dukakis Center for Urban and Regional Policy and The Boston Foundation, the outlook was bleak for manufacturing, showing that at the industry's rate of decline it showed from 2008 to 2009, the last manufacturing job in the state would disappear in 2019. But in the new report, the center determined that the industry began to rebound in late 2009 and has stabilized since. According to the study, the number of manufacturing companies increased in 2011, after declining since 2002.
After 2009, manufacturing's share of total private industry output in the state also began to increase after falling since 1997, thanks to investments in new technology. By 2011, it accounted for 12.2 percent of the state's output, compared to 10.8 during the worst part of the recession. Productivity grew at a rate of 8.7 percent between 2007 and 2011, more than five times the state's annual productivity rate as a whole of 1.7 percent.
While the survey's latest forecast expects that the decline in manufacturing jobs will continue over the next decade, it suggests that the decline will be at one-fifth of the rate of the past six years and that, as a result, there will still be nearly 239,000 manufacturing jobs in the Bay State in 2018, compared to 250,000 in July. If the national and international economies strengthen, and local manufacturers compete better on a global level, that employment could be even higher by the end of the decade, the study said.
Whereas the highest number of manufacturing jobs in Massachusetts (39.8 percent) were considered low-tech, consisting of textiles and clothing, paper printing and food, beverages and tobacco, in 1970, high-tech jobs were the most in-demand in 2010 (31.2 percent). Employment among low-tech, medium-low-tech and medium-high-tech were almost evenly disbursed in 2010, suggesting strength in a broad range of sectors.
While work ethic of employees was the top reason manufacturers (55 percent) said they would stay in Massachusetts, concerns over health care costs was the overwhelming top reason a manufacturer would choose to leave, with 84.2 percent saying it was a very important reason. That was followed by the cost of worker's compensation, taxes and fees, and cost of unemployment insurance, with at least 70 percent of manufacturers citing those issues.
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