The deindustrialization of the United States has been widely considered to be a major force in shaping the economy. It’s one thing to measure where decline has been greatest but where has manufacturing survived or even grown? I use Bureau of Labor Statistics data on manufacturing jobs by county for 1967 and 2014. The results were so surprising that I at first could not believe it.
In 1967 the US had 19,423,000 manufacturing jobs, 25% of an employed labor force of 76 million, while in 2014 there were 11,900,000 such jobs, constituting only 8.3 % (that is one-third of the 1967 share).
Almost 12 million is still a lot of jobs, and higher productivity probably means that the sheer amount of stuff produced may not have fallen, but the role of manufacturing in employment has certainly shrunk and as we shall see, greatly relocated.
I reproduce a large table, because it is so interesting, indeed so astounding. There are three sections, first counties with over 25,000 manufacturing jobs in 2014 ( there were far more in 1967), then counties with over 50,000 jobs in 1967, but under 25,000 in 2014, and third, a few counties with over 4000 manufacturing jobs in 2014, and where these were a high share (over 40%) of the local labor force.
These were the some of the winners from geographic relocation. I also map these changes. The maps include three additional sets of counties: counties with between 10 and 25,000 jobs in 2014, counties with between 25 and 50,000 jobs in 1967, and counties from 33 to 40% in manufacturing in 2014. These groups are summarized in Table 1.
(Excerpt) Read more at newgeography.com ...
