The Alliance for American Manufacturing (AAM) President Scott Paul joined the America’s Work Force Union Podcast and discussed the return of manufacturing jobs to the U.S., including why these jobs are increasingly high-skilled union positions, with better pay and benefits than jobs in the service sector offer.
The U.S. economy saw more than 38,000 manufacturing jobs added in March, with roughly 389,000 factory jobs created over the past 12 months. This is an impressive recovery with tremendous momentum, considering the manufacturing sector practically fell off a cliff at the beginning of the pandemic, Paul said. The recovery also marks the first time following a recession that lost manufacturing jobs were recovered, he added. Paul feels the past 12 months were an increasingly optimistic time for American manufacturing.
Due to the high quality of training required, manufacturing jobs tend to have at least a 20 percent pay premium compared to service sector jobs, Paul noted. He said many jobs in manufacturing are now union and offer a full array of benefits. These jobs are also in high demand, as there were over 808,000 open manufacturing jobs in February, according to the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics.
Paul also talked about the Bipartisan Innovation Act, which if passed, would invest critical federal resources to bring manufacturing competitiveness back to the U.S.
He then spoke about efforts of the Biden Administration to strengthen the Buy America Act, which would put more scrutiny on waivers to allow non-American goods to be purchased by the government.
Listen to the entire episode to learn more about these topics: