The Economy

Manufacturing Unemployment: 24,000 U.S. Jobs In June

July 8, 2005

According to the Institute for Supply Management, both new orders and production picked up in June among U.S. manufacturers. Employment, however, did not. The manufacturing sector of the U.S. economy shed 24,000 jobs last month, with the decline ...

John McClenahen

According to the Institute for Supply Management, both new orders and production picked up in June among U.S. manufacturers. Employment, however, did not.

The manufacturing sector of the U.S. economy shed 24,000 jobs last month, with the decline concentrated in motor vehicle and parts, the U.S. Labor Department reported on July 8. "Job losses also occurred in electrical equipment and in paper and paper products," added Kathleen P. Utgoff, the commissioner of the department's Bureau of Labor Statistics. "The number of factory jobs has decreased by 96,000 since August 2004, offsetting gains posted earlier in 2004," she noted.

"Overall, the manufacturing sector has shed 3 million jobs since 2000, and by this point in the recovery [from recession] 2 million of those jobs should have been recovered," observes Peter Morici, a professor at the University of Maryland's Smith School of Business in College Park. "Inexpensive imports are holding down employment in manufacturing and some service activities, clamping down on wages even as [overall] employment continues to grow," he asserts.

However, payroll growth for the larger U.S. nonfarm economy proved to be a bit of a disappointment in June. Employment increased by 146,000, about 50,000 less than many economists expected and below the 150,000 jobs the economy needs to create each month just to keep up with population growth.

The U.S. unemployment rate, which is based on a different survey from payroll employment, fell to 5% in June from 5.1% in May as the number of people not in the labor force increased by 1.2 million.

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.