Of Course Manufacturing Still Matters!

When I spotted the article titled “10 States Where Manufacturing Still Matters” on USA Today’s website, I thought it was a terrible headline. Of course manufacturing still matters! How do people think their products are made? But it turns out that the article focuses on state GDP figures published by the Bureau of Economic Analysis for 2012. The data shows the states that had the largest percentage of output attributable to manufacturing: the “10 states where manufacturing still matters.” In my opinion, still not a good headline, but nonetheless, I was intrigued enough to continue reading and then share some stats from the article with you.

According to USA Today, in July, America’s manufacturing sector grew for the second month in a row. This is certainly a positive improvement, considering the country has lost almost 2.5 million manufacturing jobs in the past 10 years.

It also says between January 2007 and mid-2009, Indiana lost more than 100,000 manufacturing jobs. In Michigan, almost 125,000 manufacturing jobs were lost between January 2008 and January 2009 alone.

Now, many of these states have seen employment rebound. Michigan had the fastest 

manufacturing job growth in the nation from the end of 2009 to the end of 2011, the article says.

To read more, and discover which ten states represented the largest total share of the state economy, click here.