From ‘China shock’ to recovery awe

According to a 2024 New York Times article by Peter S. Goodman, towns that have been devastated by the outsourcing of manufacturing to China and lower-priced imports from Mexico are seeing a resurgence thanks to the investments in high-technology manufacturing.

Manufacturing plants in small towns can make-or-break those communities. Often employing a large number of the town’s population, manufacturing plants provide consistent work and income from one generation to the next and help to maintain population stability. When one company establishes a manufacturing plant that often leads to other companies establishing their manufacturing facilities and distribution centers in the region too. Small independent business is created to support these larger enterprises and their employees.

When such a large employer closes, there is a ripple effect upon the community, such as lost taxes, less utility revenue, and lost wages to spend money on in shops, restaurants, and supplier companies. People’s personal lives are affected. In close-knit towns like these, it’s not always so easy to just pack up and move to another location, especially when one’s career has been spent at the same manufacturing job working for the same employer, and when there are family considerations.

This is why it was so heartening to read Mr. Goodman’s article. After decades of hardship to many small communities—such as those that I visited when I worked for a large apparel manufacturer in the early 1990s—these small towns are seeing a manufacturing boom with investments in facilities for the manufacturing of computer chips, electric vehicles, and biotechnology. Some of this has been aided by U.S. government programs such as the CHIPS and Science Act. Other initiatives have been led by well-known companies with incentives at the county and state level. 

What has helped these small towns make their comebacks was the realization that many of them already had the foundational infrastructure in place, e.g., old textile factories that utilized large volumes of water would make excellent manufacturing facilities for computer chips that have the same water requirement. What was once old is now new again. 

As reported by 60 Minutes on Dec. 4, 2016, a once economically devastated area of Mississippi was able to attract new manufacturers by investing in infrastructure and proving that they had the workforce that could be trained for new roles. As exampled in this televised piece, a former quality manager at a shuttered slaughterhouse was retrained to be a quality manager at an engine production facility. The employee already knew quality, it was just a matter of updating her education on what she was reviewing for quality. And after several months of training, she settled into her new job at a significantly higher salary.

Despite the hardships that many small towns have endured over the past several decades as their communities have struggled due to outsourcing, the future of these municipalities is bright thanks to multi-billion-dollar investments in cutting-edge technologies that will result in skilled workforces, high salaries, thriving places to live, and products proudly produced right here. 

To view the original 60 Minutes piece, go to:  https://www.cbsnews.com/news/60-minutes-mississippi-factory-jobs-joe-max-higgins/    

SC
MR