The Jobs Report Reveals More Mediocrity for the Manufacturing Sector

By Matthew McMullan
Jan 08 2016 |
The sun sets on a year of weak factory hiring in America. | Photo by Alex Bellink

All in all, 2015 was pretty rough.

Good news for people who like mediocre news: today was jobs day, and if you were looking for an uptick in manufacturing jobs, you got one … kind of.

The economy added nearly 300,000 jobs in December, and a whole 8,000 of them were in manufacturing. Better than nothing, but that’s pretty weak. In fact, there were only 35,000 manufacturing jobs added for the entirety of 2015!

Those of you who have long memories will remember that President Obama, on the re-election trail in 2012, said he’d put policies in place to create 1 million new factory jobs during his second term. Those of you who have terrible memories can just watch him say it a bunch on YouTube:

But in reality, he’s nowhere near that total. Not even halfway there. And it’s not looking like it will get much better in 2016, noted AAM President Scott Paul, who said it thusly:

Just yesterday, 200 Ohio steelworkers received layoff notices. More than 12,000 steelworkers were laid off across the country in 2015. With China's currency devaluing, and its industrial overcapacity spreading pain around the globe, we can expect more bad news for American manufacturing in the months to come.