The Manufacturing Industry's Secret Success Story

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Investors Business Daily:

If you listen to politicians these days, you'd think the country's manufacturing industry was on its last legs.

President Obama told Congress in his State of the Union speech that "we have a huge opportunity, at this moment, to bring manufacturing back," and offered a wide range of tax breaks, worker training programs and other federal projects to do so.

At the other end of the spectrum, GOP presidential candidate Rick Santorum talks about the need to "revitalize" the industry. "We went from about 21% of jobs in this country when I was a kid being in manufacturing down to 9%. We lost those jobs overseas. We need to bring them back," he said.

 

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Obama has proposed a big tax break for domestic manufacturers. Santorum wants to zero them out altogether.

But the data show that, despite the picture painted by politicians, manufacturing is a success story at the moment. Examples:

More jobs. Manufacturers hired 50,000 more workers in January and more than 400,000 over the past two years — a faster growth rate (3.5%) than for jobs overall (2.4%).

Less unemployment. The jobless rate in the manufacturing industry has been below the national average for the past eight months, although it was far higher than the national average at the peak of the downturn, Bureau of Labor Statistics data show.

Faster growth. Between the third quarter of 2010 and the third quarter of 2011, the manufacturing industry grew at three times the rate of the overall economy.

Bigger profits. At the same time, the industry's profits climbed 20.4%, four times greater than profits for all U.S. corporations.