Southeast seeing resurgence of manufacturing

South Florida Business Journal
Douglas Sams

Manufacturing is showing signs of a comeback in Georgia and the rest of the South after being decimated in recent years.

A manufacturing recovery could reignite some of the economic expansion that has fizzled amid the real estate collapse. It could also rekindle a manufacturing industry that has lost hundreds of thousands of jobs across the South.

Nearly 180,000 Georgia manufacturing jobs were cut during the past decade.

… “The South has not had a strong presence with the unions, it generally has lower taxes, and there seems to be more cooperation between the state and the private sector,” said Don Sabbarese, professor of economics and director of the Econometric Center at Kennesaw State University’s Michael J. Coles College of Business.

All those factors bode well for the South, he said.

But, even though manufacturing could become a bigger part of the Georgia economy, the state will be challenged to replace the roughly 177,000 manufacturing jobs lost between 2000 and 2009, Sabbarese said.