Factory jobs in the US and Alabama have been thinning since NAFTA

Published: Sunday, November 06, 2011, 3:00 AM Updated: Sunday, November 06, 2011, 10:10 AM

By Russell Hubbard -- The Birmingham News

It came out Friday that U.S. manufacturing employment has hit another rough patch, a condition familiar to Alabama's factory sector.

The Labor Department said last week U.S. factories added only 5,000 jobs in October, after a first half of the year during which they added almost 24,000 jobs per month.

It might be news to the Rust Belt states, some of which were enjoying a brief renaissance early in the year. But it isn't in Alabama, where factory jobs have been on the serious wane since the North American Free Trade Agreement of the 1990s.

In September 2001, there were 329,000 people working in manufacturing jobs in Alabama. Ten years later, there are 238,000, according to the latest numbers from the Alabama Department of Industrial Relations. That is a loss of almost 100,000 jobs, a decline of 28 percent.

Amid the malaise, a lot of companies have been running advertisements on television, touting their manufacturing prowess, chest-thumping about how "America makes things," and similar paeans to workaday grit and can-do spirit. It seems like an alarming trend: When American manufacturing really was on top, no one had to point such things out.

The debate is central to the country's long-term economic and social well-being. Cheap imported goods from overseas countries where factory workers earn next to nothing help the pocketbook when shopping Walmart. But do they help all of our neighbors, the ones lacking the intention or academic prowess to attend college or the desire to work in an office?

"It's clear that manufacturing employment is stalling, which should be alarming to anyone concerned about the job prospects for Americans who do not possess a four-year college degree," said Scott Paul, executive director of the Alliance for American Manufacturing, responding to last week's dismal manufacturing numbers.

http://blog.al.com/businessnews/2011/11/post_105.html