The Hinesville Metropolitan Area, which is Liberty and Long Counties, has been ranked as the third best place to work in manufacturing in the United States by a website that targets financial advisors.
Here’s the story from smartasset.com:
“Manufacturing has a special place in the American story, but for the past few decades, this sector has been largely on the decline, impacting many workers and affecting decisions around things like budgeting and where they call home.
“Since 1997, more than 91,000 manufacturing plants have closed and almost 5 million manufacturing jobs have been lost, according to a 2020 study from
the Economic Policy Center. Still, there are jobs to be had and careers to be built in the world of manufacturing in the U.S., provided you are looking in the right places.
“To that end, SmartAsset analyzed various data to find the best places to work in manufacturing in 2020.
“To find the best places to work in manufacturing, we compared 378 metro areas across the following metrics: manufacturing as a percentage of the workforce, job and income growth between 2015 and 2018, job and income growth between 2017 and 2018, housing costs as a percentage of income and unemployment.”
For details on the data sources and how the organization put all the information together to create the final rankings, check out the Data and Methodology section of the website’s story. The link is at the end of the story.
“Key Findings
“About one in 10 U.S. jobs is in manufacturing. Manufacturing represents 11.39% of jobs on average across all 378 metro areas we analyzed in our study. The metropolitan area where manufacturing makes up the highest percentage of jobs is Elkhart-Goshen, Indiana, where 57.45% of all jobs are in the manufacturing sector. The area where this rate is lowest is Laredo, Texas, where just 0.84% of the workforce is in manufacturing.
“In recent years, manufacturing income has grown faster than jobs in the industry. From 2015 to 2018, the average number of manufacturing jobs has grown by just 3.66%, while the average income for manufacturing workers has grown by 6.44%.”
Here are the top five best places:
- St. Joseph, MO-KS
The St. Joseph metropolitan area, located in both Missouri and Kansas, has 24.74% of its workforce in manufacturing, the 18th-highest rate in this study. It’s also a place where jobs are fairly easy to come by: The unemployment rate in October 2020 was just 3.1%, 16th-lowest across all 378 areas we studied. St. Joseph scores lower in terms of income growth between 2015 and 2018 – though still within the top half of the study – coming in 145th for this metric, at 7.61%.
- Lafayette-West Lafayette, IN
In the Lafayette-West Lafayette metro area, home to Purdue University, around 25.23% of the workforce consists of manufacturing workers, the 16th-highest rate for this metric in the study. Income growth between 2017 and 2018 was especially high here, at 16.64%, seventh-highest of the 378 metro areas we analyzed. This seems to be a recent development, though, as income growth between 2015 and 2018 was not as robust at 8.73%, ranking in the top third of the study at 126th.
- Hinesville
Hinesville saw manufacturing job growth of 27.50% between 2017 and 2018, the third-highest increase for this metric in the study. It also finished 38th in terms of job growth between 2015 and 2018, at a total of 14.50%. In this metro area, 17.81% of the workforce is in manufacturing, placing this coastal community 59th in the study for this metric, a top quartile finish.
- Decatur, IL
Decatur, in the central part of the Land of Lincoln, saw income for manufacturing jobs increase by 33.08% between 2015 and 2018, the fourth-highest increase in the study for this metric. The one-year increase in manufacturing job income between 2017 and 2018 was 12.88%, the 10th-highest bump in the study. Decatur is also a fairly affordable place to live, as housing costs represent just 10.81% of income on average, the fifth-lowest rate for this metric across all 378 metro areas in the study.
- Spartanburg, SC
In Spartanburg manufacturing jobs represent 25.05% of the entire workforce, the 17th-highest percentage for this metric overall. Spartanburg also ranks in the top 20 for both job-growth metrics: It comes in 15th for job growth between 2017 and 2018 (11.45%) and 18th for job growth between 2015 and 2018 (18.98%).
For a complete list of the top places and more on the story, go to: