Beyond the Products: A Look at the Workers and their Occupations in the Manufacturing Industry

"On Manufacturing Day, we celebrate the wide range of skills and occupations of workers in the manufacturing industry.

According to the U.S. Census Bureau, one in 10, or 15.4 million, U.S. workers in the civilian workforce had jobs in the manufacturing industry in 2016, making everything from cars to food. What do we know about people who work in manufacturing? What specific occupations do manufacturing workers hold? Using the American Community Survey, we can paint a statistical picture of manufacturing workers to gain a deeper understanding of the people who work in the manufacturing industry.

Compared with all workers, people who work in the manufacturing industry were older, had less education, were mostly men, were more likely to work full-time, year-round, and earned more on average.

Manufacturing industry employees work in hundreds of occupations, which can be organized into five broad groups. Almost half of workers were in production, transportation, and material moving occupations (49.2 percent) while management, business, science, and arts occupations comprised 30.0 percent. Other jobs within the manufacturing industry include sales and office occupations; natural resources, construction, and maintenance occupations; and service occupations..."
Manufacturing industry jobs

Census Bureau Survey Shows Adoption of Structured Management Practices at U.S. Manufacturing Establishments

"Manufacturing establishments in the South and Midwest utilize more structured management practices than their counterparts in the Northeast and West, according to new results from the U.S. Census Bureau’s Management and Organizational Practices Survey.

Structured management practices in the South and Midwest received the highest scores of 0.568 and 0.556, respectively. The West followed with a score of 0.533, and the Northeast adopted the least structured management practices with a score of 0.517.

These scores were based on the survey, which includes 16 questions, that the Census Bureau used to construct a management score that summarizes establishments’ degree of structure in their management practices. Each of the questions on management practices was scored on a scale from zero, for least structured, to one, for most structured. More structured practices are those that are more explicit, formal, frequent or specific. The questions also identify:

• How activities are monitored.
• How targets for production and other monitored performance indicators are set.
• How achievement of those targets are incentivized..."

Manufacturing practices

What Is Manufacturing? Why Does the Definition Matter?

"Numerous provisions in federal law are intended to support manufacturing in the United States. Almost without exception, these provisions define manufacturing as the process of physically transforming goods. Physical transformation involves what might be thought of as traditional manufacturing activities such as molding, cutting, and assembly. These laws establish a variety of potential benefits, preferences, or penalties based on the country in which physical transformation occurs.

 By and large, federal supports targeted specifically at manufacturing rest on two implicit premises that have been rendered questionable as a result of developments in the private sector.

• Each manufactured product is assumed to have a single country of origin. The determination of whether a product is American-made is binary; either it was made in the United States or it is an import. This assumption fits uneasily with the global value chains now widely used by manufacturers to combine raw materials, components, services, and intellectual property from multiple countries into a single, finished manufactured good.

• Physical transformation is assumed to be the means by which manufacturing creates economic benefits. Under a variety of statutes, the fact that other activities related to making a product are conducted in the United States is not relevant to the determination of whether the product is made in the United States. This is generally the case even if those activities account for a large proportion of the value of the finished good or of the employment related to the good’s production. Conversely, a good may be treated as U.S.-made if significant parts are of U.S. origin and if the good was transformed in the United States, even if all research, design, software development, and other nonphysical activities related to its production occurred in other countries...."

Manufacturing

Census Bureau Completes Release of All 364 Manufacturing Reports from Economic Census Industry Series

"In recognition of Manufacturing Day on October 3, the Census Bureau presents descriptions of its wide array of data products on the manufacturing sector of the economy. Additionally, statistics on all 364 industries in the manufacturing sector are now available from the 2012 Economic Census.

2012 Economic Census Industry Series: A complete series of national-level data files on specific manufacturing industries, including, for instance, the number of establishments, payroll, number of employees, value of product shipments and services provided by businesses. News releases are available highlighting breweries, automobile manufacturing, household appliance manufacturing andsemiconductor manufacturing..."
Economic Census Manufacturing reports

Largest industries by state, 1990–2013

"In 1990, the manufacturing industry was the leading employer in most U.S. states, followed by retail trade. In 2003, retail trade was the leading employer in a majority of states. By 2013, health care and social assistance was the dominant industry in 34 states. This animated map shows the top industry in each state and the District of Columbia from 1990 to 2013..."
Industries by state

The President’s Plan to Make America a Magnet for Jobs by Investing in Manufacturing

A fact sheet on President Obama's plan for investing in manufacturing.
http://www.whitehouse.gov/the-press-office/2013/02/12/fact-sheet-president-s-plan-make-america-magnet-jobs-investing-manufacturing

Made In America: Helping Revitalize U.S. Manufacturing

"President Obama has said that an economy built to last is one that is based not only on consuming goods but on making things.  That’s why we’re proud to announce the launch of Manufacturing.Data.Gov.  This new community on Data.gov is a one-stop Web portal for anyone interested in sharing and ideas and transforming emerging technologies into commercial success stories.  It will serve as a public resource of high-value datasets, tools, and applications that can help entrepreneurs streer the entire product development chain for a project, from invention, engineering design and prototyping, to validation and testing, manufacturing, and sales..."

INTERNATIONAL COMPARISONS OF HOURLY COMPENSATION COSTS IN MANUFACTURING, 2010

"Manufacturing hourly compensation costs in the United States in 2010 were lower than in several northern and western European countries, Australia, and Canada, but higher than in the United Kingdom and 19 countries in southern and eastern Europe, Asia, and South America, the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics reported today (see chart 1). U.S. hourly compensation costs rose about 2 percent from the previous year to $34.74 (see table 2)..."

REPORT TO THE PRESIDENT ON ENSURING AMERICAN LEADERSHIP IN ADVANCED MANUFACTURING
"....To ensure that the U.S. attracts manufacturing activity and remains a leader in knowledge production, we recommend the following two strategies: (1) Create a fertile environment for innovation so that the United States provides the overall best environment for business. We believe this can be accomplished through tax and business policy, robust support for basic research, and training and education of a
high­skilled workforce; and (2) Invest to overcome market failures, to ensure that new technologies and design methodologies are developed here, and that technology ­based enterprises have the infra­structure to flourish here.

We recommend this be accomplished by launching an Advanced Manufacturing Initiative. This initiative would support innovation in advanced manufacturing through applied research programs for promis­ing new technologies, public­private partnerships around broadly­applicable and precompetitive technologies, the creation and dissemination of design methodologies for manufacturing, and shared technology infrastructure to support advances in existing manufacturing industries..."

International Comparisons of Hourly Compensation Costs in Manufacturing, 2008
"The trade-weighted average of hourly compensation costs in U.S. dollars for all employees in manufacturing among 32 foreign economies was 85 percent of the U.S. level in 2008, increasing from 82 percent in 2007, according to data issued by the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics. (See chart 1.) Compensation costs relative to the United States rose or remained unchanged in 28 of the 32 foreign economies covered in 2008. (See table 1.) This news release contains data for all employees and
production workers. (See discussion on page 3, table B, and table 7.) A note on labor costs in China and India appears on page 4 of this release..."

Productivity and Costs by Industry: Manufacturing Industries, 2007
"Labor productivity – defined as output per hour – rose in 53 percent of detailed manufacturing industries in 2007, the .S. Bureau of Labor Statistics reported today. This was about unchanged from the proportion that recorded productivity increases the previous year. (See table 1.) Unit labor costs declined in 19 percent of the industries.

Output fell and hours declined in more industries in 2007 than in 2006. Output fell in 58 percent of the 86 4-digit NAICS industries in 2007 and hours fell in 63 percent. More industries experienced sharp increases or large declines in productivity in 2007 than in the previous year. Productivity rose by 10 percent or more in ten industries and declined by 10 percent or more in nine industries. Two of the ten largest detailed industries by employment size – aerospace products and parts manufacturing and semiconductors and electronic components manufacturing – posted double-digit output and productivity growth in 2007.

Unit labor costs fell in 16 of the 86 manufacturing industries in 2007. (See table 1.) Unit labor costs reflect the total labor costs required to produce a unit of output. Increases in labor productivity help to offset increases in hourly compensation and thus limit increases in unit labor costs..."

2007 Economic Census: Manufacturing Industry Series
"This is a series of national-level data files on the manufacturing sector (NAICS 31). These include data for industries such as bottled water, plastic bottles, breakfast cereal, retail bakery products, mobile homes, nitrogenous fertilizers and others. The files provide data on the value of product shipments, number of establishments, payroll, number of employees and other data items by industry. These data will be released through September 2009."

Factors Underlying the Decline in Manufacturing Employment Since 2000
"...The steep decline in manufacturing employment since 2000 is associated with two interrelated developments: rapid gains in productivity (output per hour) in U.S.
manufacturing and increased competition from foreign producers. Competition from overseas helped spur U.S. firms to boost productivity, but that competition
has also dampened demand for goods produced in the United States, despite domestic manufacturers’ efforts to reduce costs through productivity enhancements."