Economist Predicts Job Growth in Manufacturing

A new economic forecast for next year shows manufacturing jobs in the state growing for the first time since the nineties.

Dr. Matt Murray, the Associate Director of the University of Tennessee’s Center for Business and Economic Research, pegs the state’s job growth rate at 1.4-percent. He talked about his predictions at yesterday’s Manufacturing Summit in downtown Nashville.

Murray says Tennessee’s manufacturing “zenith” occurred in 1995. Since then jobs in the nondurable goods sector, like the garment industry, have steadily declined. Murray says those jobs have gone to foreign countries, like China, because it doesn’t take a skilled labor force and the labor is cheap.

The good news for Tennessee, says Dr. Murray, is manufacturing durable goods, like cars.

“When you look at durable goods, there is a fairly bright future there at least in the short-term, those competitive pressures are not going away. So, you’re going to have continue to invest, the state is going to have to invest, and workers themselves are going to have to invest. This is a three-way partnership. It’s a joint burden shared by all to try maintain competitiveness in manufacturing.”

Nondurable goods manufacturing is characterized by larger plants, and a highly skilled workforce. Murray says for Tennessee to remain competitive, it will have to focus on educating and training its citizens.

Nearly 10-percent of the state’s population has less than a ninth grade education – surpassing the national average by two and two-and-a-half percentage points.