Manufacturing Cities in 2015 (Los Angeles, Boston, Chicago, economy)

[waronxmas]

Gosh, just imagine how far Detroit has gone in just a few decades. I'd imagine that number was well over a million back in the 70s/early 80s.

[waronxmas]

Originally Posted by thedirtypirate

It's somewhat amazing how few manufacturing jobs exist between NYC and DC these days, when it was the Hub a 100 years ago. It is said that the quality of things really began to drop when people started ordering from the Sears Catalog. Cracks me up people blame NAFTA. Like we were expirencing outsourcing to places like Atlanta by mid century.

Also interesting is that most of those jobs had left Atlanta by the end of the 20th. This huge GM plant (which was leveled a few months ago for a new development) once had 25,000, until it was shut down right before the Great Recession. All of those jobs moved away to some nowhere town in Alabama or something.

[mjlo]

Originally Posted by waronxmas

Gosh, just imagine how far Detroit has gone in just a few decades. I'd imagine that number was well over a million back in the 70s/early 80s.

That's a good thing for Detroit, it means it has a more knowledge based economy and is less reliant on economic cycles for it's job base.

[Chicago60614]

Originally Posted by waronxmas

Gosh, just imagine how far Detroit has gone in just a few decades. I'd imagine that number was well over a million back in the 70s/early 80s.

Detroit was at around 390,000 back in the year 2000, a peak and an increase of 40,000 at least over the prior ten years.

Then it dropped to 173,000 jobs in 2010 and has gained back 66,000 jobs to reach 239,000 today.

The past five years are easily the best in manufacturing job gains over the past 26 years, although it really dipped a lot there in 2009.

Detroit overall has gained 250,000 jobs in the past 5 years. The metro areas first growth in jobs since the late 1990's.

My husband's family is from Detroit. We were just back there and I asked them how it's doing, they all chimed in that finally things are going much better for the metro area. They can really feel it this time, something they haven't in around 16-17 years.

[Chicago60614]

Cities that are really struggling are places like Flint, Michigan. I believe just the big car companies along employed over 80,000 people in the early 1980's.

There are currently 10,000 TOTAL manufacturing jobs in the Flint area.

Michigan overall lost around 900,000 jobs from 2000 to 2010, it lost the entire decade.

The past five years though it's really turned around, and has gained back 500,000 of those jobs.

[Drewcifer]

Here are the same numbers expressed as manufacturing employment as a percentage of total employment:


Grand Rapids 19.59%
San Jose 15.50%
Milwaukee 14.17%
Cleveland 11.93%
Detroit 11.84%
Portland 10.96%
Cincinnati 10.69%
Minneapolis 10.06%
Seattle 9.94%
Hartford 9.78%
Charlotte 9.42%
Buffalo 9.36%
Chicago 9.03%
Providence 9.01%
Los Angeles 8.96%
Indianapolis 8.88%
Nashville 8.67%
St Louis 8.48%
Houston 8.26%
Salt Lake City 8.15%
Dallas 7.74%
San Diego 7.60%
Pittsburgh 7.54%
Boston 7.25%
Memphis 7.22%
Kansas City 7.12%
Riverside 7.10%
Virginia Beach - Norfolk 6.99%
Columbus 6.88%
Philadelphia 6.43%
Phoenix 6.25%
Atlanta 6.10%
Austin 6.00%
Oklahoma City 5.97%
Raleigh 5.83%
San Francisco 5.59%
New Orleans 5.34%
Tampa 4.95%
Denver 4.88%
San Antonio 4.78%
Richmond 4.73%
Jacksonville 4.55%
Baltimore 3.96%
Sacramento 3.96%
New York City 3.94%
Orlando 3.57%
Miami 3.36%
Las Vegas 2.36%
Washington DC 1.66%

[animatedmartian]

Originally Posted by waronxmas

Gosh, just imagine how far Detroit has gone in just a few decades. I'd imagine that number was well over a million back in the 70s/early 80s.

Not quite that high. In 1970, the census counts the peak just under 600,000 residents within the MSA who were employed in manufacturing. It fell by 100,000 by the year 2000.

However, the share of that number that was in the city versus the suburbs was declining rapidly. In 1950, 300,000 jobs were in the city, but by 2000 it fell to 65,000. By 2010, it fell under 20,000.

Also interesting to note, in 1980, Detroit was still the third largest metropolitan area for manufacturing employment behind LA and Chicago and ahead of NYC. And I believe LA only fell under 1,000,000 in manufacturing employment in 1990. Chicago was a little earlier IIRC.

[SyraBrian]

Portland still has a blue collar underbelly to its hipster reputation.

[OyCrumbler]

Originally Posted by mjlo

That's a good thing for Detroit, it means it has a more knowledge based economy and is less reliant on economic cycles for it's job base.

Eh, that transition could have been a lot smoother.

[mjlo]

Originally Posted by OyCrumbler

Eh, that transition could have been a lot smoother.

Metro Detroit as a region has been quietly making that transition for the past 35 years. Unfortunately the problems of the city of Detroit are the face of that transition. When in reality the cities problems were as much if not more political, than they were economic. The economics of the city were more a bi-product of corruption, mismanagement and fractured regionalism.