EXECUTIVE SUMMARY
Manufacturing has been one of the major bright spots in the economic recovery of the last few years, contributing more than 25 percent of the overall growth in GDP between 2009 and 2011 and adding roughly 500,000 new jobs between the beginning of 2010 and the end of 2012. This trend is especially welcome as manufacturing jobs often provide higher wages and better benefits than non-manufacturing jobs.
However, the importance of manufacturing to the economy is not uniform across the U.S. as manufacturing industries are concentrated in certain locations. In this report, we examine county-level data to assess the importance of manufacturing in local economies throughout the U.S. and find that, although almost all states include some counties where manufacturing accounts for a significant share of jobs and earnings, such counties are concentrated in the Midwest and the South, are more likely to be outside metropolitan areas, and are relatively small.
Specifically, we find:
- In 2010, there were 629 counties, or roughly 20 percent of all U.S. counties, where earnings paid to manufacturing employees accounted for at least 20 percent of total earnings of all employees.
- Indiana and Ohio had the most counties where manufacturing accounted for at least 20 percent of total earnings (50 and 48 counties, respectively), followed by Tennessee (42 counties), Wisconsin (40 counties), Georgia (36 counties), Iowa (36 counties) and Kentucky (31 counties).
- These counties are more likely to be located outside of metropolitan areas; about 68 percent of counties with at least 20 percent of total earnings derived from manufacturing were located in rural or micropolitan areas.
- There were 181 counties spread over 27 states where manufacturing jobs made up at least 20 percent of total employment. Indiana and Ohio had the largest number of such counties, at 26 and 16, respectively. Again, these counties are more likely to be located outside of metropolitan areas as roughly 80 percent are located in rural or micropolitan areas.
