Report: American Manufacturing Alive and Well

Plastics Business

The Myth and the Reality of Manufacturing in America, issued by Ball State University’s Center for Business and Economic Research (CBER) in Muncie, Indiana, and Conexus Indiana, the state’s advanced manufacturing and logistics initiative, found that openings for new manufacturing jobs will range from 80,000 to 150,000 a year over the next decade.

The study also found that more than 87 percent of manufacturing job losses are due to productivity gains, including better supply gains, more capital investment and advanced technology. Only 4 percent of manufacturing jobs have been lost to international trade since 2000 and, since the end of the Great Recession in 2009, the economy has added 750,000 manufacturing jobs. The biggest job losses occurred in low productivity sectors with low transportation costs.

For more information, visit conexus.cberdatat.org or www.bsu.edu/cber/publication.