Ingrams August 2023

Manufacturing Muscle Missouri is flexing it, tripling the national average in job growth for that sector in a post-pandemic recovery. N ot far across the state line from the vacation playground of Myrtle Beach, S.C., a fellow by

“The change in manufacturing jobs over the last 12 years has been a real re surgence that not a lot of people were predicting,” Abernathy said in a report prepared for the Missouri Chamber of Commerce. “We’ve seen a manufactur ing renaissance that we think is just go ing to get stronger as we go forward.” “Many people still have an anti quated idea of what manufacturing looks like,” said Dan Mehan, president and CEO of the statewide chamber. “Today’s manufacturing jobs are some of the most high-tech and high-paying. Missouri’s heritage was built on mak ing things, and we are excited to see our state take the lead in bringing these op portunities back.” Not all industry sectors were equal ly slammed by the pandemic, so rates of recovery vary substantially. But the advantages that fell to Missouri, from an employment perspective, came in manufacturing, construction, and finan

cial services. On a more granular level, the strongest recoveries came in Joplin and Springfield, with the Kansas City Columbia-Jefferson City corridor post ing solid gains. St. Louis and St. Joseph, more than two years after the onset of the pandemic, still had the most ground yet to regain. The conditions, Abernathy said in the chamber report, suggest that the state has set itself up for continued mo mentum: “In certain sectors, Missouri seems to have found its footing for fu ture growth,” he said. Leading the way for that growth has been the automotive manufacturing sec tor, which saw workers from Ford and General Motors turning out a combined average of more than 10,000 vehicles a week in 2022—topping 562,000 for the year. This, despite a long, global break in supply chains that halted production on assembly lines because computer chips were in short supply. But it stood to reason that the Mis souri auto plants—and the suppliers who provide key components—would rebound strongly, given that the nation’s two biggest automakers had pumped nearly $4.5 billion into improvements since 2010 at the Ford plant in Clay como and the GM plant in Wentzville. Formula for Growth Missouri’s highly competitive posi

the name of Ted Abernathy is part of a group of policy experts who crunch data and offer their insights to local govern ments and companies about what they discern reading economic tea leaves. Their base in Shallotte, N.C., is more than 900 miles from St. Louis, but even from that vantage point, Abernathy and his cohorts can see something happen ing in Missouri that stands out. Since the start of the COVID-19 pandemic, his group said last year, total manufacturing employment in Missouri had grown 5.7 percent. The rest of the nation? A compara tively puny 1.6 percent. Abernathy’s team at Economic Leadership LLC said Missouri had more than tripled the na tional rebound pace by adding more than 30,000 net new jobs in manufac turing between 2010 and 2022.

KC Street Car

DRIVING EMPLOYMENT | Often cited as be ing one of Ford Motor Co.’s top performers, the Claycomo assembly plant in Kansas City has more than 7,000 workers turning out the popular F-150 pickup truck series, along with Transit vans.

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