The National Association of Manufacturers pointed to the September 1 Labor Department employment report as an indication that the economy is continuing to moderate from robust growth that took place earlier in the year.
"The addition of 128,000 jobs in August, on par with the jobs created during the prior two months, shows that the economy is in a decelerating mode,” said NAM chief economist David Huether. "While manufacturing employment fell by 11,000 in August, after a 23,000 decline in July, it has edged up by 12,000 to a level of 14.2 million over the past year. However, this modest change overshadows an emerging dichotomy within manufacturing: Over the past year, production employment, that’s jobs on the factory floor, have increased by 150,000 while non-production jobs have fallen by 138,000. Of the 22 major manufacturing sectors, 10 have added 226,000 jobs over past 12 months. Half of these increases were in computers and electronics and transportation products outside of motor vehicles such as aircraft. At the same time, production employment fell 76,000 in the remaining 12 sectors, with half of these declines concentrated in textiles and motor vehicles.
“These figures show that while some manufacturing sectors are benefiting from solid growth in exports and business investment, other sectors are significantly challenged by rising import competition and the effects of high gasoline prices."
The
The NAM Labor Day Report is available at http://www.nam.org/labordayreport.
