Loss of Employment in Manufacturing before and during the Great Recession

The following chart shows the loss of manufacturing jobs, by state, in the decade between 1996 to 2005. The right-to-work state are indicated in boldface type.

States with a Loss of More than 20 Percent of Their Employment in Manufacturing:

Alabama		74,900
Colorado		42,500
Connecticut		52,000
Delaware		10,300
Illinois		224,000
Maine		20,800
Maryland		37,400
Massachusetts		109,600
Michigan		210,000
Mississippi		57,400
New Hampshire		24,200
New Jersey		104,800
New York		222,000
North Carolina		228,000
Ohio		216,000
Oklahoma		35,000
Pennsylvania		199,600
Rhode Island		19,800
South Carolina		77,900
Virginia		79,400
Washington		102,400
West Virginia		16,300

This chart would seem to support the value of right-to-work since only six of the 22 worst-performing states are right-to-work states, and among those six, Oklahoma became a right-to-work state only halfway through the period being tracked.

But before latching on to such conclusions, readers should consider several factors. First, during this time period, excluding Oklahoma, 28 of the 49 states, or almost 60%, were pro-Labor. Second, on the whole, pro-labor states have had substantially higher employment in manufacturing than right-to-work states have had, and that difference widens the farther back one goes. So the pro-Labor have simply had more jobs to lose, and most of those jobs have simply been eliminated. If they had been transferred to right-to-work states, those right-to-work states would be showing substantial increases in manufacturing employment, rather than the substantial decreases shown in the preceding and the following charts. Lastly, and perhaps paradoxically, five of the 16 pro-labor states on this list of those with the highest percentage of manufacturing jobs lost between 1996 and 2005 either have low overall populations or had low employment in manufacturing to begin with.

The next chart, which includes states that lost between 15% and 20% of their manufacturing jobs between 1996 and 2005. Again, the right-to-work states are indicated in boldface type.

States with a Loss of 15% to 20% of Their Employment in Manufacturing:

Arizona		37,300
Arkansas		41,500
California		353,700
Florida		72,600
Georgia		107,600
Louisiana		36,900
Minnesota		60,500
Missouri		65,500
Montana		3,500
New Mexico		7,900
Tennessee		92,900
Texas		201,100
Wisconsin		104,500

Note that in this second group of states, all of which lost one out of every five or six manufacturing jobs during this period and therefore did only marginally better than the states in the first list, seven of the 13 states are right-to-work states.

In fact, all of the right-to-work states with the highest employment in manufacturing—Texas, North Carolina, Florida, Georgia, Tennessee, and South Carolina—are on these two lists.

The following chart shows the remaining manufacturing jobs, by state, in 2008, or at the beginning of the Great Recession:

State		Manufacturing. Employment
California		1,425,300
Texas		924,400
Ohio		739,000
Illinois		657,400
Pennsylvania		643,800
Michigan		573,600
New York		531,900
Indiana		521,200
North Carolina		518,000
Wisconsin		492,900
Florida		371,100
Tennessee		361,000
Minnesota		335,600
Washington		291,200
New Jersey		298,800
Massachusetts		286,400
Missouri		289,100
Alabama		284,300
Virginia		264,800
Kentucky		245,100
South Carolina		242,400
Iowa		227,400
Oregon		195,100
Connecticut		187,300
Kansas		187,200
Arizona		173,100
Mississippi		159,700
Louisiana		152,800
Colorado		144,100
Utah		125,900
Maryland		128,100
Nebraska		101,400
New Hampshire		75,900
Idaho		63,000
Maine		58,800
West Virginia		56,500
Nevada		48,200
Rhode Island		47,900
South Dakota		42,700
Vermont		35,100
New Mexico		35,100
Delaware		31,700
North Dakota		26,400
Montana		20,000
Hawaii		14,900
Alaska		13,000
Wyoming		10,000

You can compare that list to the following list of the 20 states that lost the most manufacturing jobs between 2008 and 2009, as the Great Recession had its most immediate and most acute impact. Again, the right-to-work states are indicated in boldface.

Ohio		127,000
California		123,400
Michigan		108,900
Illinois		83,500
Indiana		80,800
Texas		80,200
Pennsylvania		73,100
North Carolina		70,000
Wisconsin		57,800
Georgia		52,400
New York		44,400
Florida		42,300
Minnesota		39,000
Tennessee		38,500
Alabama		35,400
Kentucky		33,100
Iowa		30,500
South Carolina		29,900
Oregon		29,800
Virginia		28,800

Right-to-work proponents will undoubtedly rush to point out that the five states with the highest numbers of manufacturing jobs lost were all pro-labor states.

But I think that it is worth noting that Texas, which is usually touted by right-to-work proponents as a dynamo of manufacturing jobs impervious to the effects of the Great Recession, lost only marginally fewer jobs than Illinois and Indiana—and, Governor Perry’s attempts to lure California factories to Texas notwithstanding, Texas did proportionately little better than California in retaining or adding manufacturing jobs. (As a footnote, perhaps voters in Indiana should have considered more pointedly if that difference of 600 jobs lost in manufacturing warranted adopting right-to-work legislation, especially since in 2008 Indiana’s population was 26% of that of Texas, but the state had 56% of the number of jobs in manufacturing that Texas had.)

More notably, in 2008, there were six right-to-work states in the top twenty states by manufacturing employment, and there were nine right-to-work states in the list of the states that lost the highest number of manufacturing jobs between 2008 and 2009.

But, again, very broadly, if one wishes to measure the impact of right-to-work legislation on retaining and creating jobs in manufacturing, looking the loss of manufacturing by percentage is more helpful than measuring it by the simple number of jobs lost. The clear pattern is that states that have had more jobs in manufacturing have simply had more jobs to lose, regardless of whether they have been pro-union or right-to-work states.

In fact, I will try to show in the next several posts in this series that the loss of manufacturing jobs has more to do with automation than with anything else, and it now may be much more indicative of the health of manufacturing in given states to consider the value of manufacturing output rather than the employment in manufacturing.

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Previous posts in this series have included:

Part 1: Population Growth and Movement: https://academeblog.org/2013/04/03/2666/

Part 2: Immigration: https://academeblog.org/2013/04/21/right-to-work-by-the-numbers-part-2/

Part 3: Unemployment Rates, by State: https://academeblog.org/2013/04/30/right-to-work-by-the-numbers-part-3/

Part 4: Historic Highs and Lows in Unemployment, by State: https://academeblog.org/2013/05/05/right-to-work-by-the-numbers-part-4/

Part 5: Employment in Manufacturing: https://academeblog.org/2013/05/10/right-to-work-by-the-numbers-part-5/

My other posts on “right to work” have included:

“Right to Work Isn’t Going Away, at Least for the Moment”: https://academeblog.org/2012/09/07/right-to-work-isnt-going-away-at-least-for-the-moment/

“Right to Work Is an Insult to Intelligence”: https://academeblog.org/2012/12/11/right-to-work-is-an-insult-to-intelligence/

“Right to Work Is an Insult to Intelligence, Addendum”: https://academeblog.org/2012/12/12/right-to-work-is-an-insult-to-intelligence-addendum/

“Right to Work Introduced in the Ohio House”: https://academeblog.org/2013/05/01/right-to-work-bills-introduced-in-ohio-house/