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It's too soon to get excited, but manufacturing jobs are growing
Friday, April 10, 1998 By Steve Massey, Post-Gazette Staff Writer
When the last shift called it quits at LTV Corp.'s Hazelwood coke plant on Feb. 28, it was broadcast as the latest example of manufacturing's sad demise in the region, another slap in the face of once mighty industrial Pittsburgh.
There's only one problem with the storyline.
It isn't true.
Not only is manufacturing in the region not dead, it's been doing something recently it hasn't done for decades - it's been growing.
True, we're not talking mind-boggling, draw-the-lunchbucket-crowd-out-of-retirement kind a growth. There are no new 2,000-employee steel plants to provide a way of life for a new legion of blue-collar workers. Or huge new semiconductor plants where employees don clean suits and toil in a dust-free environment.
Instead, we're talking a few hundred more jobs at the Sony Corp. television and glass-making complex in Westmoreland County. Tens of new jobs at the new GalvTech steel galvanizing plant in Hays. And scores of other jobs at smaller machine-tool, industrial machinery and specialty steel shops that dot the region and quietly have been adding shifts and production lines.
Tally it all up and the picture is fairly promising. Even before this week's announcement that a new wallboard plant, and up to 400 jobs, was coming to Aliquippa - a month after a second wallboard maker broke ground on a 150-employee plant in nearby Shippingport - local manufacturing was on the rebound.
The fact is that factory employment in the region has been on the upswing four straight years and, in the past two, has been expanding even faster than the nation.
From a low of 131,700 in 1993, manufacturers in the six counties of Allegheny, Beaver, Butler, Fayette, Washington and Westmoreland have added 5,400 workers, some 2,700 last year alone.
The trend appears to be almost as promising this year, with manufacturers on pace to add 2,600 more workers, though that's sure to slow when the 750 LTV employees hit the jobless rolls.
PNC Bank's chief economist, Stuart Hoffman, is forecasting local manufacturing payrolls to grow by 1,400, or 1 percent, this year. That's likely to be a stronger showing than the nation, he said yesterday.
"The idea that manufacturing jobs are going to grow for a fifth straight year is good news," Hoffman said. He noted that if his forecast holds, local manufacturing employment will reach its highest level in nine years.
A rebound in local manufacturing isn't the only feature that has made Hoffman more upbeat about the region's prospects.
While he isn't forecasting any breakthrough growth -- he still predicts local payroll employment to expand at about a 1 percent annual pace this year, much as it has the past four years -- Hoffman says there are a number of forces coming together that augur stronger growth.
At the core, he said, are billions of dollars of new projects that, if they come to fruition, will bolster the construction and tourism industry and give the region some oomph just as the rest of the country is slowing down. These include an expanded convention center, new and expanded hotels, new operations centers for PNC and Mellon, new Downtown stores, new riverfront housing and new stadiums for the Pirates and Steelers.
"There are reasons to believe we can pick up the pace of growth," Hoffman said. "We're going to pour a lot of dollars into this region, both public and private, the next few years. Pittsburgh seems to have a little more wind at its back."
Hoffman made his comments during one of his regular economic briefings. He also forecast:
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The nation's economy will continue to grow through the next millennium, marking the longest expansion in post-World War II history. The current expansion is celebrating its seventh birthday this month, and already it's the nation's third-longest expansion, behind recession-free growth from 1982 to 1990 and most of the '60s. Hoffman said the economy is acting like a 40-year-old who's capable of doing 50 push-ups, instead of a sluggish 80-year-old, as would be expected for an economy at this stage of expansion.