The Economy

U.S. Manufacturing Job Gain Must Be Discounted

March 4, 2005

The manufacturing sector of the U.S. economy added 20,000 jobs during February, the U.S. Labor Department reported on March 4. While the National Association of Manufacturers was understandably applauding the gain, the first employment increase in U.S. ...

John McClenahen

Much of the February increase in manufacturing jobs was a result of automotive industry workers returning to their jobs after temporary layoffs, noted Kathleen P. Utgoff, the commissioner of the Labor Department's Bureau of Labor Statistics. Although "a few other manufacturing industries had small gains" in February, manufacturing employment has shown "little net change" since the middle of 2004," she added.

Indeed, the 20,000 manufacturing jobs added in February exactly offset the 20,000 lost in January and returned U.S. manufacturing employment to 14.3 million.

Overall, the nonfarm sector of the U.S. economy created 262,000 new jobs in February, significantly more than the 150,000 needed each month just to keep up with population growth. February's overall job increase also was better than the 225,000 gain economists had generally expected.

The U.S. unemployment rate rose to 5.4% in February 2005 from 5.2% in January as the civilian workforce grew by 153,000 people with very little change in the total number of people employed.

About the Author

John McClenahen | Former Senior Editor, IndustryWeek

John S. McClenahen, is an occasional essayist on the Web site of IndustryWeek, the executive management publication from which he retired in 2006. He began his journalism career as a broadcast journalist at Westinghouse Broadcasting’s KYW in Cleveland, Ohio. In May 1967, he joined Penton Media Inc. in Cleveland and in September 1967 was transferred to Washington, DC, the base from which for nearly 40 years he wrote primarily about national and international economics and politics, and corporate social responsibility.

      McClenahen, a native of Ohio now residing in Maryland, is an award-winning writer and photographer. He is the author of three books of poetry, most recently An Unexpected Poet (2013), and several books of photographs, including Black, White, and Shades of Grey (2014). He also is the author of a children’s book, Henry at His Beach (2014).

      His photograph “Provincetown: Fog Rising 2004” was selected for the Smithsonian Institution’s 2011 juried exhibition Artists at Work and displayed in the S. Dillon Ripley Center at the Smithsonian Institution in Washington, D.C., from June until October 2011. Five of his photographs are in the collection of St. Lawrence University and displayed on campus in Canton, New York.

      John McClenahen’s essay “Incorporating America: Whitman in Context” was designated one of the five best works published in The Journal of Graduate Liberal Studies during the twelve-year editorship of R. Barry Leavis of Rollins College. John McClenahen’s several journalism prizes include the coveted Jesse H. Neal Award. He also is the author of the commemorative poem “Upon 50 Years,” celebrating the fiftieth anniversary of the founding of Wolfson College Cambridge, and appearing in “The Wolfson Review.”

      John McClenahen received a B.A. (English with a minor in government) from St. Lawrence University, an M.A., (English) from Western Reserve University, and a Master of Arts in Liberal Studies from Georgetown University, where he also pursued doctoral studies. At St. Lawrence University, he was elected to academic honor societies in English and government and to Omicron Delta Kappa, the University’s highest undergraduate honor. John McClenahen was a participant in the 32nd Annual Wharton Seminars for Journalists at the Wharton School at the University of Pennsylvania in Philadelphia. During the Easter Term of the 1986 academic year, John McClenahen was the first American to hold a prestigious Press Fellowship at Wolfson College, Cambridge, in the United Kingdom.

      John McClenahen has served on the Editorial Board of Confluence: The Journal of Graduate Liberal Studies and was co-founder and first editor of Liberal Studies at Georgetown. He has been a volunteer researcher on the William Steinway Diary Project at the Smithsonian Institution, Washington, D.C., and has been an assistant professorial lecturer at The George Washington University in Washington, D.C.