New Report Uses Real-time Labor Market Data to Analyze U.S. Manufacturing Sector

The Center for Regional Economic Competitiveness (CREC) released a new report that uses real-time labor market information data (web-based job advertisements) to analyze the U.S. manufacturing sector for the first half of 2011. Using Labor Insight, a web tool that aggregates data about web-advertised job openings, co-authors Lauren Gilchrist, Ken Poole and Mark White highlighted several important characteristics of anticipated manufacturing hiring:

• Manufacturers posted nearly 669,000 web-advertised job postings over the first six months of 2011;
• An overwhelming number of manufacturing jobs advertised online (91 percent) are not directly related to production activities;
• Manufacturing job openings were concentrated in major metropolitan areas;
• Almost one in four manufacturing job openings was in just three industries (computer and peripheral equipment manufacturing;
• aerospace product and parts manufacturing; and
• pharmaceutical and medicine manufacturing);

Over half of the openings within manufacturing required more than a high school diploma; Twenty-five percent of production-related jobs required educational attainment beyond a high school diploma; Many of the occupations (e.g., sales and management positions, engineering positions and production) within manufacturing required previous experience; and, Only seven percent of available manufacturing jobs identified a specific certification requirement.

The authors hope that this report provides a framework for a repeatable, regular study that addresses three important questions to policymakers and jobseekers: Where are the advanced manufacturing jobs? Who is hiring? What preparation do workers seeking jobs in today's manufacturing sector need?