By Tim Henderson, Stateline.org (TNS)
Before the COVID-19 pandemic, McLean County, Illinois, was best often called the house of State Farm Insurance in Bloomington and Illinois State University in Normal.
Now the realm is exemplifying a trend that’s bringing more factories to small towns with lower costs of living: There are 1000’s of recent jobs making Rivian electric vehicles and a brand new candy factory that can produce Kinder Bueno and other Ferrero candies.
“Food and electric cars. We weren’t known for this before 2019,” said Patrick Hoban, president of the Bloomington-Normal Economic Development Council in McLean County.
“We are primarily an insurance and university town that is currently experiencing a boom in manufacturing. Rivian increased its workforce from 300 to 8,000, and I don’t think anyone realized how quickly that would happen,” Hoban said.
President-elect Donald Trump has vowed to rebuild American manufacturing, and he has made significant gains in most areas which were hollowed out by the movement of factory jobs overseas. But the recovery promised by Trump is already underway in lots of places: McLean County is a component of an unusually strong surge in manufacturing jobs between 2019 and 2023 — the primary time because the Nineteen Seventies that manufacturing jobs have fully recovered from a recession have recovered, such a thing Current report from the Economic Innovation Group, a nonpartisan public policy organization in Washington, DC
In 2023, there have been about 12.9 million manufacturing jobs, barely greater than in 2019. However, the number of producing jobs has fallen significantly because the all-time high in 1979, when there have been 19.4 million, and their share is loads accounted for a bigger share, total employment fell sharply.
Joseph McCartin, a Georgetown University professor and labor history expert, said the manufacturing industry has been on the upswing since 2010, when the country began recovering from the Great Recession. The pandemic has interrupted the course, however the United States has recently seen a hopeful increase in wages for the brand new jobs, he said, because the Biden administration boosts each wages and jobs through the CHIPS and Science Act and the Inflation Reduction Act wanted to extend.
“The Biden administration has tried to use policy to ensure that more of these are union jobs, or at least provide union-level wages,” McCartin said. “That approach is almost certainly dead based on the election results.”
Employers could find it difficult to fill low-paying manufacturing jobs resembling meat processing if the brand new Trump administration deports the immigrants who fill them, said William Jones, a history professor on the University of Minnesota and former president of Labor and Working Class History Association.
“These will be hit hard if Trump pursues his deportation plan,” Jones said. “The political rhetoric says that a lot of native-born workers are going to move into these jobs, that they're going to be pushed out, but that's actually not the case. Some of these industries are extremely dependent on immigrant labor.”
Where growth took place
Small urban areas like McLean County saw a lot of the growth in manufacturing jobs between 2019 and 2023, in response to the Economic Innovation Group report. Rural areas lost these jobs and there was no change in major cities.
Sun Belt and Western states particularly saw increases in those years, in response to a Stateline evaluation of federal Bureau of Labor Statistics data.
The largest percentage changes in manufacturing jobs occurred in Nevada (up 14%), Utah (up 11%), and Arizona and Florida (each up 9%). The most recent manufacturing jobs were in Texas (up 48,200), Florida (up 35,100) and Georgia (up 22,900).
Southern states like Alabama and Mississippi also saw more automotive jobs as manufacturers benefited from lower costs and state “right-to-work” laws that weakened unions. Vehicle production increased by 7,800 in Alabama and 6,600 in Mississippi, the biggest increase outside of California.
Meanwhile, traditional Rust Belt states saw continued declines, with manufacturing jobs down about 2% in Michigan, Ohio and Pennsylvania, in addition to Illinois, despite McLean County's success.
Manufacturing plays a critical role in Nevada because it seeks to diversify its tourism-focused economy so it may well higher weather downturns just like the one throughout the pandemic, said Steve Scheetz, research manager for the Nevada Governor's Office of Economic Development.
Manufacturing and recycling of automotive and other batteries, driven by electric automotive maker Tesla and battery recycling company Redwood Materials, is liable for much of the rise in production in Nevada, Scheetz said.
As in Illinois, job growth tended to occur in smaller areas outside major cities, resembling Storey County, east of Reno, with a population of about 4,200.
“Fifteen years ago, this small county in rural Nevada was relatively unknown,” Scheetz said, adding that jobs and economic output have increased tenfold, with the variety of total jobs — including manufacturing — rising from fewer than 4,000 to almost 16,000 in those 15 years be years. The county also has plants producing constructing materials, industrial minerals and molded rubber, amongst others.
The Biden administration has focused on bringing more blue-collar jobs to small towns like Normal and Bloomington, said Jones, a professor on the University of Minnesota.
“A lot of the growth is due to that [President Joe] Biden's investments in manufacturing. “There was a deliberate strategy to focus on small towns to gain political advantage in places that tended to vote Republican,” Jones said.
When it got here to political advantages, the outcomes were mixed: Vice President Kamala Harris carried McLean CountyIllinois, on November fifth, but she lost Storey CountyNevada, with the biggest margin for a Democrat in 40 years.
Workers' wages
The decline of unions and the provision of cheaper labor abroad have led to declining wages in U.S. factories in recent a long time. Still, manufacturing jobs remain a sexy path for staff.
Manufacturing wages remain the identical ranks pretty high Among staff, wages averaged $34.42 an hour in October – lower than wages within the energy sector ($39.98) or construction ($38.72), but significantly higher than within the Hospitality ($22.23) or Retail ($24.76). That was also the case in 2019, leading many states and cities to search for more factory jobs to make up for the lower-paying service sector jobs that emerged as manufacturing declined.
But over the past yr, Republican leaders have pushed back on a burgeoning labor movement within the South that goals to present staff higher wages and higher advantages.
In Alabama, Republican Gov. Kay Ivey signed a brand new law in May that may withdraw state incentives from firms that voluntarily recognize unions. GOP leaders also in Georgia and Tennessee enacted laws They push against a resurgent labor movement and look at unions as a threat to the states' manufacturing economies.
Much of Alabama's manufacturing jobs have grown within the northern a part of the state, near Tennessee and Georgia. Since the beginning of the pandemic, Mazda Toyota Manufacturing has set a goal of hiring 4,000 staff in vehicle production and one other 2,000 at nearby parts factories, as other manufacturers have also ramped up hiring. Private investment in automobile production in Alabama totaled $7 billion throughout the same period, Stefania Jones, a spokeswoman for state Commerce Secretary Ellen McNair, said in a press release to Stateline.
Supply chain issues throughout the pandemic highlighted the advantages of U.S.-made goods, said McCartin, a professor at Georgetown University. However, without the support of unions, it’s unlikely that today's factory staff would give you the option to attain the middle-class lifestyle of previous generations, he said.
“It is unlikely that manufacturing growth itself will be a panacea for the problems of the American working class,” McCartin said.
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