This region was built on manufacturing.  It was a cornerstone of our region and still remains an important part of it today.  We have 197,757 workers in the tri-county employed within 13,300 business interests in our region.

  The breakdown of industry sectors looks like this:

Manufacturing continues to be a great strength in our region; however the national manufacturing sector has been declining for the past 20 or 30 years.  Manufacturing has fallen off 50% more nationally than it has in our region.  Structural change happened in the 1990’s when several other countries opened up over a span of 6 years or so.  Nearly half of the world’s population opened up and we saw a lot of manufacturers move to find cheaper labor.  Luckily, our region is bucking the trend.  Our workers are more productive especially in durable goods and replacement part manufacturing.  This workforce is using more technology, getting more educated and providing more human capitol.  They continually improve their output in order to be more competitive.  We are working smarter.

We have seen job loss.  Our unemployment rate has increased.  This recession is affecting our friends, our families and our neighbors.  It hurts, but we are more diversified now than in the past and that is helping us weather the storm.

We are certainly not recession proof, but we are not as bad as many other places across the nation.  In some one horse towns there’s a dramatic downturn, but we have been able to sustain ourselves so far.  By continuing to work together and making the correct decisions, we will be able to sustain ourselves through this recession. We were able to do it in the 1980’s and we can do it again if we work together.

Doug Parsons, Excel Foundry and Machine:

Jeff Bahnsen, Foremost Technologies:

Jim McConoughey, The Heartland Partnership, on Manufacturing:

Dr. Joshua Lewer, Bradley University, on Manufacturing: