Despite job growth, manufacturing weak

Ray Bacon doesn't get an iota of comfort from statistics that show Nevada is the only state in the union to add manufacturing jobs since July 2000.

"We're on the top of a really crummy list," says Bacon, the executive director of the Nevada Manufacturers Association.

Although the National Association of Manufacturers reports Nevada has added about 900 manufacturing jobs in the last 30 months, Bacon says the statistic hides the pain in which the state's manufacturers find themselves.

The association estimates that 40 to 50 manufacturers have shuttered their Nevada operations in the past couple of years while other closures are in process.

Raises for employees of manufacturing companies have been rare, Bacon says, and many companies froze hiring.

"The recession in the manufacturing sector is not over," he says.

Nevada's manufacturers haven't escaped fierce competition from Mexico, China and other developing nations that batters companies across the nation.

Those nations, Bacon says, are growing more competitive as they develop the manufacturing infrastructure reliable power supplies and computerized techniques, for instance that once was found only in North America and Europe.

The competition grows more challenging as India begins targeting the hightechnology jobs that have been developed in the United States.

For all the gloom, then, why is manufacturing employment growing in Nevada and particularly in the Carson City area, which is the state's manufacturing center? One word: California.

"California is doing a pretty good job of driving manufacturing out of the state," says Chuck Alvey, president and chief executive officer of the Economic Development Authority of Western Nevada.

While EDAWN and other economic development agencies have launched a broad effort to woo California companies, much of that work focuses on manufacturing, Alvey says.

Those companies, he says, typically are the hardest hit by California's sharp rise in rates for workers compensation coverage and prices for electric power.

While the recruitment of new industrial companies has buoyed Nevada's manufacturing sector and created the impression that it's growing Bacon cautions that the state faces limitations in its ability to bring new companies here.

A big worry, he says, is the lack of a strong manufacturing infrastructure, the web of suppliers critical to major industrial companies.

In some niches, however, the web of suppliers is well-developed.

Northern Nevada, for instance, is home to numerous manufacturers who supply International Game Machine, the slot-machine giant.

"Thank God for IGT," Bacon says.

"They have continued to do very well."

Another concern of Nevada manufacturers, Bacon says, is the condition of the state's educational system.

"The magnitude of our problems in K- 12 are just incredible," he says.

"Everyone else is making progress.We're not."

That's more than an academic concern.

Across the United States, the National Association of Manufacturers projects that the retirement of the Baby Boom generation means the industry needs 10 million skilled workers by 2020.

Even with recent layoffs, manufacturers across the nation say they're having trouble finding skilled workers.