Reno-Sparks manufacturers project job growth

While manufacturing executives are buoyant about their industry's future in the Truckee Meadows, most of the much-publicized growth in manufacturing employment in Nevada has come in the Las Vegas area.

Since 2001, Nevada has added some 4,800 manufacturing jobs, state Department of Employment, Training and Rehabilitation figures show.

In most of those years, Nevada has been alone or nearly alone among the 50 states in its growth of employment.

But state figures estimate 3,900 of the new manufacturing jobs more than 80 percent of the total have gone to Las Vegas.

Fast-growing Lyon County, which includes the big industrial clusters at Mound House and Fernley, added 480 manufacturing jobs in the past five years.

The Reno-Sparks area added 200 jobs in the sector growing from manufacturing employment of 14,000 in 2001 to the current figure of 14,200 and manufacturing employment in Carson City declined by about 800 jobs from 2001 through early this year.

A recently completed survey of executives of 67 manufacturing companies in Sparks and Reno finds, however, that the companies plan to add 860 new jobs and invest $192 million in new facilities during the next three years.Some 58 percent of the companies interviewed as part of the Business Builders program of the Economic Development Authority of Western Nevada said they plan to add staff or facilities within the next 12 months.

That's particularly noteworthy given the steady loss of U.S.

manufacturing employment to offshore competition, said Donna Crooks, EDAWN's business expansion manager.

Nationwide, manufacturing employment has declined by 21 percent in the past five years.

The companies surveyed by EDAWN said they've added 465 jobs in the past three years.

And while existing manufacturers in the region project growth in the next three years, the region continues to attract manufacturing firms from elsewhere in the nation.

Forty-five percent of the companies with which EDAWN currently is working as potential new employers in the region are manufacturers, Crooks said.

In the agency's current fiscal year, manufacturers have accounted for 44 percent of the newly located companies with which EDAWN has worked.

"A lot of the companies tell us about the ease of doing business here as opposed to California," Crooks said.

Among the positive factors cited by manufacturers are an easier regulatory climate in Nevada, lower workers compensation costs and a productive workforce.

At the same time, three quarters of the manufacturing executives said their companies are having trouble recruiting employees.

High-demand positions, they said, range from technically skilled workers and tool makers to project leaders and quality assurance managers.

Nearly two-third of the surveyed companies 64 percent said they've increased their spending on training, and 72 percent said they offer training programs.

Asked about their worries, some 29 percent said they stay alert for legislative changes that could hurt their businesses.