A Washington Post article this weekend noted that the U.S. manufacturing sector has lost 269,000 jobs over the past 12 months, with 28,000 jobs lost in January 2008 alone. And apparently, manufacturing employment has dropped to less than 10 percent of the U.S. workforce for the first time since workplace data began to be collected in the 1930s.

Manufacturing matters, though.  And whether it’s the roughly $1.6 trillion per year that it contributes to gross domestic product (roughly 12 percent of GDP), the good-paying jobs it generates, or its multiplier effect in creating additional jobs, the U.S. economy can not afford to see its continuing decline.

This ongoing drop in manufacturing employment is troubling, and it prompted actor/producer John Ratzenberger, who hosts AAM’s Town Hall meetings, to publish a piece in today’s Buffalo News that explains why he believes manufacturing is vital to the future of the U.S. economy.  John will expound on this at length during AAM’s upcoming Town Hall meeting in Chicago in Feb. 20.

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This entry was posted on Monday, February 4th, 2008 at 7:57 pm and is filed under Manufacturing in the U.S.. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.