Writers and analysts like Forbes‘ Tim Worstall view manufacturing as a sector neither in decline nor resurgent, but one simply changing with the times. For Worstall and others, manufacturing’s time has has come — and gone — and speculation about the health of the sector misses the broader point that U.S. manufacturing is alive and […]
Last week manufacturing was in the national news as a new report called into question the health of the sector. It’s an ongoing debate in business circles: is manufacturing enjoying a true comeback, or not? The source was the Information Technology and Innovation Foundation (ITIF), and a report entitled The Myth of America’s Manufacturing Renaissance: […]
Unless things change in the next couple weeks, manufacturing will end the year where it started — with considerable momentum and its star rising. Certainly the national business press is taking note this week of a surging sector: Factories Humming in U.S. Even Amid Global Slowing, Bloomberg; U.S. factory growth slips in Nov. but still […]
Margaret Jackson’s report on how marijuana grow operations have changed the industrial real estate market in Denver lays bare, again, the essential truth from legalization: collectively, we were unprepared to deal with its consequences, intended or otherwise. That we have a reasonably functioning marijuana industry sector is really a testament to the ingenuity of lawmakers […]
It would be misleading to look at manufacturing job gains in places like Utah and Colorado without also considering what was lost the prior decades. Neither state has rebounded to pre-recession levels of manufacturing employment and moreover, job losses in industrial centers like Indiana were of a different scale entirely. Indiana had 513,200 manufacturing jobs […]
Regardless the outcome of next week’s individual statewide races, a more enduring electoral shift is underway. Colorado’s regional divide is widening, reflecting new alliances, interests, and economic realities. In recent years, candidates running for statewide office have managed Colorado’s split electoral personality in a fairly straightforward way: Denver/Boulder and the liberal mountain redoubts were predictably […]
CompanyWeek is pushing across the West at a time regional manufacturing is on the ascent. In Colorado manufacturing employment is up 2.7% through September this year, and the past four months has outpaced overall employment growth in the state. How significant are the numbers? Better than to be caught in the vortex of duplicate tough […]
Chris Mogridge could tell his family’s Oxford, Mississippi real estate development business was in for tougher times as the financial crises of the late 2000’s deepened. “I was on the financing side of the business and could tell things were getting harder. No matter how much advertising I would do, sales were starting to slip. […]
Can two unrelated, contrasting events portend opportunity for Colorado manufacturing? Last Wednesday Ken Lund, Colorado’s chief economic development official, rolled out details of a $6.6 million Department of Defense award, what the state calls SMART, to a group of high-tech manufacturers, educators, trade and service. SMART is short for Strengthening Manufacturing by Accelerating Research and […]
As a modern manufacturing economy takes shape, a rush is on to identify who’s part of the community and how growth and progress should be measured. Our lens, our perspective, is the regional, multi-industry manufacturing economy we report on every week. Today we’re providing one tool to track it’s progress. With the help of Deloitte […]