(This post was written by David Seaver, Director of Marketing at NimbleCat, Inc.)
Economic statistics traditionally rely heavily on data reported to government agencies, as well as on opinion surveys of experts. The Wall Street Journal article referenced in last week’s post based its conclusions partly on a well-regarded survey of purchasing managers. But at what point do the these sources leave us with only half of the real story? I suspect that this situation occurs frequently, but there are remedies. Because job posts are a strong indication of a company’s future plans, statistics derived from them can supplement economic data and provide key insights that are essential to understanding the larger picture.
Last week’s post looked at a two different types of manufacturing jobs, pursuant to an article by the WSJ which discussed a rise in manufacturing. In this post, I’d like to follow up on the meaning of the numbers in that post and on issues with both how organizations gather statistics and how these statistics are analyzed.
NimbleCat’s statistics, which are extracted from job postings (rather than opinion surveys), confirmed that positions for both manufacturing process experts and supply-chain/logistics experts are, indeed, rising, month over month in the US. When we look at regions, however, there are two very different stories. The first category shows a concentration in traditional industrial areas: Detroit, Milwaukee, Minneapolis. The second shows concentrations in regions more commonly associated with commerce, government, and possibly imports: DC leads the list, Detroit falls to third, Chicago moves from fourth to second, and Boston suddenly appears in fifth, not having made the first list at all.
The first set (jobs for manufacturing experts) denotes what most people connect with manufacturing—busy factories full of people and machines, building and assembling products. The primacy of Detroit almost certainly reflects the rebound of Ford and GM, in particular.
The second set appears to have little to do with the “nuts and bolts” of manufacturing. Rather, it probably reflects activities related to corporate and government procurement processes and the large volume of imports that are a part of our economy.
Statistics like those cited by the WSJ, while correct up to a point, may fail to reflect our present post-industrial reality. I would suggest that, in effect, they display a worldview better suited to the Eisenhower era, in which growth in manufacturing meant actual expansions of factories in the US, increased domestic production, and across-the-board job growth and opportunity.
NimbleCat’s more granular statistics show that while this still occurs, many jobs that are classified as manufacturing jobs may not, in fact, contribute to domestic manufacturing. I suspect that they almost certainly reflect opportunities for global manufacturing concerns, rather than domestic companies. The primacy of DC in the logistics/supply-chain realm is likely to reflect a net drain in resources (i.e. taxes), quite possibly with little to no wider benefit, and with no net gain in domestic economic productivity.
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