Dean Barber, the site selection and economic development consultant and ardent blogger, has weighed in with a thoughtful post on the reshoring wave in American manufacturing.
Barber is hopeful that the “fad” of outsourcing jobs is being replaced by a trend in reshoring, one that recognizes U.S. markets might makes better sense as a place for manufacturing based on cost, quality, efficiency and serving domestic customers.
As we’ve noted in this space previously, some hopeful signs of a manufacturing resurgence in the United States are emerging. A trickle – it’s still to early to call it a flood – of companies are bringing back production previously shipped to lower-wage overseas locations.
No doubt, we have shifted to a knowledge economy. But there’s also no doubt that manufacturing is a key component of the knowledge economy and we’re better off making things than not making things.
Manufacturing drives research and innovation. It promotes skills development. And it pays better than a lot of other jobs. The average hourly pay for a factory worker making durable goods was $20.15 in January, almost a dollar an hour better than the broad service category.
Let’s be clear, though – certain manufacturing jobs are gone and gone forever. The low-skill assembly work that left for other shores, where it could be done cheaper, are never coming back.
But there is opportunity in harnessing community assets and promoting skills sets to attract manufacturing investment.
Wilkes County NC, for example, has fashioned a manufacturing cluster centered around the building products industry with a deep pool of skilled craftspeople, many of them veterans of the region’s legacy furniture industry.
Though the region has lost a good deal of its textile industry, product innovation is spurring one company to expand. Worldwide Protective Products has acquired a 90,000-square-foot former glove manufacturing facility in Wilkesboro to expand its business making its heat-, cold- and cut-resistant glove and specialty products used in glass and steel manufacturing, food processing, automotive and other industries.
Wilkes County sees even bigger opportunities in manufacturing innovation and the power of collaboration. An initiative spearheaded by Wilkes Community College’s Industrial Workforce and Development Division and supported by multiple public, philanthropic and industry partners in the region, is working to promote the region’s strengths in advanced materials and composites.
To Scott Hamilton president and CEO of AdvantageWest Economic Development Group, which has a complementary advanced materials initiative that spans Wilkes and 22 other counties in western North Carolina, the Northwest Cluster offers a significant advantage.
Hamilton says automotive and aerospace companies are showing more interest in the region, which is well situated to supply Tier 1 automakers in the burgeoning Southeast automotive manufacturing corridor.
“We are always going to have manufacturing,” he says. “The jobs may be fewer but will require higher skills and have higher pay. That’s what makes specialized training through (Wilkes Community College) and the Northwest Cluster so valuable.”
