Is U.S. Manufacturing Creating Jobs?

July 27, 2006

The answer won't be known until Aug. 4, when the U.S. Labor Department reports July employment data. In June, U.S. manufacturing added 15,000 jobs, following a decline of 8,000 in May. Meanwhile, the latest Labor Department numbers on initial claims for ...

John McClenahen

The answer won't be known until Aug. 4, when the U.S. Labor Department reports July employment data. In June, U.S. manufacturing added 15,000 jobs, following a decline of 8,000 in May.

Meanwhile, the latest Labor Department numbers on initial claims for unemployment insurance, released July 27, don't provide a clear indication of whether or not the manufacturing sector is adding jobs this month.

On the positive side, Michigan reported nearly 15,000 fewer claims for jobless benefits during the week ending July 22 than it had the week before. Fewer layoffs in the auto industry, which has been going through its annual retooling process, were the stated reason. Wisconsin, Pennsylvania, Indiana, Illinois and Kansas also reported fewer claims in manufacturing last week.

However, claims increased significantly in Georgia, Alabama, Tennessee, North Carolina and South Carolina, particularly in the textile, apparel and wood-products industries.

For the overall U.S. economy, including manufacturing, initial claims for unemployment insurance fell to 298,000 last week, a decrease of 7,000 from the previous week's revised figure of 305,000, the Labor Department said. The total was substantially below the 315,000 claims that economists generally expected.

The department's four-week moving average of first-time jobless claims also declined last week, falling to 312,750, some 4,250 less than the previous week's revised average of 317,000.

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.