Manufacturing’s oversized influence is difficult to communicate through data alone. For example, the National Association of Manufacturers estimates that for every $1 spent in manufacturing, $2.79 is added to the economy. It’s a gaudy multiplier effect, if marginally effective as a main talking point to counter manufacturing’s other PR challenges.
Help has arrived. Today, other more tangible outcomes provide stark examples of the importance of domestic manufacturing. America’s current supply-chain crisis is immediate and transparent, and outcomes like a shrinking middle class, diminished rural economies, and massive trade deficits are also clear byproducts of a desiccated U.S. manufacturing base.
These outcomes point to what’s been lost along with several million manufacturing jobs early in the 2000s.
But if manufacturing’s decade-long recovery signals a reimagined sector, so too does manufacturing’s changing industrial makeup. Where the move offshore of semiconductor manufacturing has left America vulnerable, a boom in local and regional food production has improved our overall health and wellness. As we abandoned apparel and textile manufacturing, a transformative domestic transportation ecosystem is modernizing factories and supply chains. In short, yesterday’s metrics speak only broadly to the health of the sector as some manufacturing industries surge.
Texas is a national manufacturing bellwether. In America’s second-largest manufacturing state, trends here point to a new national model, a rediscovering of our goods-producing chops — even as data suggests it happening along different industry fault lines than in the past.
As we launch the TX Mfg. Report, here’s today’s numerical baseline in Texas.
Download Texas Manufacturing by the Numbers as a PDF here.
