As editor of The Richmond, Ind., Palladium-Item kicked off a series on employment issues Sunday with an interesting story, "Disappearing act: Exodus of area jobs began long before recession hit."
The story caught my eye because of the string of companies mentioned right at the top with plastics operations: Cinram, Engineered Plastic Components, and Spartech Plastics.
Correspondent Pam Tharp described firms on the list as being among the "area employers that sent jobs overseas or shuttered local plants since 2006."
The story notes that eastern Indiana and western Ohio -- the Palladium-Item's circulation area -- lost quite a few manufacturing jobs to low-cost countries in the past decade.
But the story isn't all doom-and-gloom. Surviving manufacturing companies are leaner and better able to manage through tough times. Opportunities still exist for better trained, higher skilled workers. And some manufacturers say today they're winning work that a few years ago would have automatically been awarded to suppliers in China or Mexico.
The story is worth a look ... and there's already an active debate about manufacturing issues taking place in the "reader reactions" section of the site.
Comments (1)
Though many manufacturing jobs have been lost to low cost labor countries like China, India and Mexico just as many jobs have been lost to improvements in productivity. We moved to automating our processes and improved information technology over 5 years ago. The cost of these technologies and their flexiblity make it easy to pay them back now. It is the only way we are going to be able to compete against these other countries. In fact, we now ship a few parts to China and Japan and have a significant amount going to Mexico.
As you mentioned, the good news is that if we can compete globally our business will grow and we will need to hire people. The difference is that we will need people with higher level of skills, especially technical and computer skills.
Posted by Craig Carrel | January 14, 2011 5:03 PM
Posted on January 14, 2011 17:03