The Economy

5% Manufacturing Production Growth Forecast For 2006; 2.5% For 2007

Sept. 7, 2006

U.S. manufacturing production will advance a modest 5% this year and then slow markedly to 2.5% growth in 2007, suggests the most recent detailed quarterly economic forecast from Manufacturers Alliance/MAPI, an Arlington, Va.-based business and public ...

John McClenahen

Communications equipment promises to be the standout sector this year, with production expected to rise 27% from 2005. The demands of national defense, the Internet, cellular communications, high-definition television broadcasting and HD radio, will drive growth in 2006, according to the alliance. Aerospace products and parts also are likely to have a very good 2006, with production increasing 17%. Production of electronic instruments is forecast to increase 15%, and production of construction machinery is expected to rise 14%.

In contrast, the alliance is forecasting production declines this year for pharmaceuticals (down 1%), alumina and aluminum (down 1%), and HVAC equipment (down 6%).

No production growth in 2006 is forecast for paper, and motor vehicles and parts.

For 2007, production of mining and oil and gas field machinery is forecast to rise 17%, making it -- at this point -- the leader. Communications equipment production is expected to rise 9%, and production of electronics instruments is expected to increase 8%.

In contrast, appliances (down 2%), steel (down 2%), motor vehicles and parts (down 5%), and engine, turbines and power equipment (down 2%) are expected to post production declines in 2007.

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.