Seattle Leading an American #Manufacturing Revival

By AUBREY COHEN, SEATTLEPI.COM STAFF
Published: Friday, May 25, 2012

Seattle is leading a manufacturing recovery in the United States, Forbes reported Thursday.

U.S. factories have been expanding for more than 33 months, thanks in part to China’s rising wages, intellectual property protection concerns and other issues, Forbes said. It ranked 65 metropolitan areas by recent growth trends, job growth over the past five and 10 years, and the manufacturing momentum.

“In an era of excitement over the Internet, it is often forgotten that a majority of the country’s scientists and engineers work for manufacturers, and that industrial companies account for 68 percent of business R&D spending, which in turn accounts for about 70 percent of total R&D spending,” Forbes wrote.

Nowhere is this linkage between technology and industry more evident than in the Seattle-Bellevue-Everett area, which ranks first on our list of the metropolitan areas leading the manufacturing revival. Over the past year the region was No. 2 in the nation in manufacturing growth, with employment expanding 7.9 percent. The aerospace sector, led by Boeing, accounted for roughly half this expansion.

The growth in aerospace and high-tech employment creates precisely the kinds of high-wage jobs, including for blue-collar workers, that are lacking in many parts of the country. In 2010 the average factory wage in the area was $64,925, up 9 percent from 2007. Most critically, manufacturing activity drives growth in other sectors of the economy. About one in six of all private-sector jobs depend on the manufacturing sector, and every dollar of sales of manufactured products generates $1.40 in output from other sectors, the highest of any industry.

The largest group of “manufacturing stars” are in the Texas-Oklahoma energy belt, benefitting from a boom in shale drilling for natural gas, Forbes said. It also reported that some rust belt stalwarts are seeing a manufacturing renaissance.