Manufacturing is Vital

Click on the Election Center button to the right to visit the National Association of Manufacturers Election Center page. This is where you will find the tools employers need to encourage greater and more informed voter participation. This page has a variety of resources for voters, employers, and candidates. There are also voter registration aids.

Click here to download Key Manufacturing Talking Points

This one page pdf from NAM outlines major policy initatives that will help make manufacturing in America more competitive. Unless Washington policymakers act, proposed tax increases slated for the end of the year will cripple manufacturers’ competitiveness and economic growth. Threats of energy overregulation will prevent manufacturers from utilizing all of our nation’s energy resources and increase energy costs. While manufacturers are working to close the skills gap, many manufacturing jobs continue to go unfilled due to a lack of skilled talent. We hope that you will share this document with your own members and legislators from your state.

Click here to view videos from NAM on the importance of manufacturing

National Manufacturing Day Is the First Friday In October

The Council of Industry is pleased to support National Manufacturing Day. This day has been designed to expand knowledge about, and improve general public perception of, manufacturing careers and manufacturing’s value to the U.S. economy. Manufacturing Day is for students, parents, educators, media, customers, suppliers and the community at large.

A big part of Manufacturing Day will be tours and visits of manufacturers, big and small, across the country. I encourage you to participate by hosting a tour of your facility.

The site also contains useful tips for promoting your tour and more information on the following:

Three Types of Manufacturing Day Events
The Manufacturing Day Social Media Playbook
Banners
Getting Started as an Event Host
Seven ways to Make Your Manufcturing Day a Success
Six Tips for Sharing Your Company’s story

Manufacturing Advocacy

To become more involved in manufacturing advocacy follow the links below to the Get Involved pages Manufacturers Alliance of New York website.

State issues
Federal issues
How to take action
Find out who your elected officials are
Register and vote
Information about our government

Why Manufacturing is Vital

New York State’s fiscal situation is dire. State government spending commitments continue to grow ever upward while the private sector engine that pays for it continues to sputter and stall. To ease New York’s fiscal woes we need to enact polices that will fuel the private economy – allowing it to accelerate and in the process create jobs for New Yorkers and revenue for the state.

In my opinion, the best way to start is by freeing the state’s manufacturing sector of many of the excessive regulatory and tax burdens that stifle its growth. I say this because of the simple fact that manufacturing adds tremendous value to the economy and actually creates wealth as opposed to simply redistributing it. By taking raw materials and with energy, smarts, sweat and ingenuity, converting them to finished goods that are sold throughout the nation and the world, manufacturers bring capital and investment into a community. That capital and investment spreads like wildfire through the economy in the form of salary and wages, bank deposits, insurance premiums, construction projects and more. Economists call this a “multiplier effect” and the multiplier for manufacturing is the highest of any sector of the economy.

Here are some facts about manufacturing in the United States:

The United States is the world’s largest manufacturing economy, producing 21 percent of global manufactured products. China recently surpassed Japan as the second largest with 14%.
U.S. manufacturing produces $1.6 trillion of value each year, or 11 percent of U.S. GDP.
Manufacturing supports an estimated 18.6 million jobs in the U.S.—about one in six private sector jobs. Nearly 12 million Americans (or 10 percent of the workforce) are employed directly in manufacturing.
In 2009, the average U.S. manufacturing worker earned $70,666 annually, including pay and benefits. The average non-manufacturing worker earned $57,993 annually.
U.S. manufacturers are the most productive workers in the world—twice as productive as workers in the next 10 leading manufacturing economies.
U.S. manufacturers perform half of all R&D in the nation, driving more innovation than any other sector.

New York’s manufacturing sector has seen ups and downs over the past century. In 1910 manufacturing employment in New York was at approximately 1 million. By 1960 the number of jobs reached nearly 2 million. Now in 2010 there are less than 500,000. However, employment is not the only measure of the manufacturing sectors success. In fact, because of the tremendous technological advancements over the past several decades and productivity gains that far outpace any other sector of the economy, manufacturing remains a powerful force in upstate New York providing over 20% of the private sector jobs and we rank 7th of the 50 states in manufacturing output producing more than $69 billion in goods annually. While decades ago, we were at the top, it is important to note that, by this measure, New York has kept pace with the nation as a whole over the most recent five years for which the Bureau of Economic Statistics has reported and gives us reason to remain optimistic about manufacturing’s potential.

Of course, by writing this on the Council of Industry’s web site, I am “preaching to the converted” as Hudson Valley manufacturers know all too well both the potential manufacturing has to revitalize our State’s economic and fiscal fortunes as well as the obstacles it faces. We need to spread the word to our elected officials at all levels of government as well as to our employs and the public at large that Manufacturing is Vital. It is vital for a prosperous economy, it is vital for a fiscally sound government and it is vital to the quality of life of all New Yorkers.

I hope you will join with me, and the 135 members of the Council of Industry and the more than 7000 Hudson Valley residents they employ in voicing your support for manufacturing. Follow the links below to find out how you can help.

Together we can steer the public policy discussion to focus on manufacturing, its vital role in our economy and by strengthening it, the role manufacturing can play in putting New York State back on road to fiscal surety. I hope we can count on your help.

Harold King
Executive Vice President
The Council of Industry

Click here to download a PowerPoint presentation that can be personalized to your company to demonstrate to your employees the importance of manufacturing in our economy and our community.

More Information

For more information on key election deadlines, congressional profiles and voting records and the facts about important manufacturing matters that are being affected by legislation go to the National Association of Manufacturers web site, follow the link below:

Ways to get involved: http://www.nam.org/Get-Involved/Manufacturing-In-Action/Landing.aspx

Tips on writing to congress: http://www.nam.org/Get-Involved/Manufacturing-In-Action/Employee-Education/Employee-Education-Tips-on-Writing-to-Congress.aspx
Write an op-ed piece or a letter to the editor of your local newspaper: http://www.bipac.net/page.asp?g=nam&content=government_writing_oped&parent=BIPAC

To learn more about the Manufacturer’s Alliance of New York click here.

Read about what the Alliance is working on in the Manufacturers Alliance Blog