Job openings in manufacturing, as well as the leisure and hospitality and education and health services industries, are becoming the surprising bright spots for jobseekers.
While employment revivals in the leisure and hospitality and
education and health services industries is not a surprise given the upheaval
in those industries related to COVID-19 disruptions, the gain in manufacturing
employment needs highlighting for jobseekers who may not have considered this
sector.
Over the first three months of 2021, manufacturing companies
posted 264,000 openings and hired 112,000 workers, according to statistics
supplied by the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics.
Manufacturing is of particular interest because the sector has
been showing steady declines in employment and workers had been conditioned to
avoid looking for jobs in this sector meaning that jobseekers who include
consideration of manufacturing jobs in their employment hunt may find greater
opportunities than they would normally expect.
Within manufacturing, companies involved in producing
durable goods, such as vehicles, showed 114,000 job openings in the first
quarter of the year, while nondurable producers, such as food processing
plants, posted 150,000 job openings.
As for actual hiring, durable manufacturers hired 112,000
workers in the first quarter of 2021, compared to 94,000 workers hired in the
first quarter of 2019, before the coronavirus. Of those hired, 74,000 were in
durable manufacturing and 38,000 were in nondurable manufacturing plants.
While job openings and hiring represent opinion of
employers, BLS also has a measure of the confidence of workers by measuring
their willingness to change jobs. Where measuring the number of workers who voluntarily
quit their jobs, economists can tell where workers have relative confidence to improve
their situation by changing positions. In manufacturing, the quit rate for
manufacturing workers has increased over the past 12 months to 2.2 from 1.2 in
March 2020 as workers find improved opportunities in the sector.
Manufacturing in Georgia
In Georgia, the number of manufacturing jobs in the state
has risen by 31,800 since April 2020 through March 2021.
In the state, Gwinnett and Fulton counties are home to largest
number of manufacturing jobs, with each county containing more than 25,000
jobs. These counties are followed by Whitfield and Hall counties at more than
19,000 each, and Cobb County with 17,000 manufacturing jobs.
Statewide, manufacturing employment is pretty evenly split
between durable and nondurable manufacturers.
After decades of marking declines in manufacturing, the
sector seems poised for a turnaround with the number of job openings and hires
increasing. Many of these jobs will require skill in operating sophisticated
complex equipment that will required employees trained through post-secondary programs.
For jobseekers, opportunities in manufacturing may offer a
career alternative that seemed all but shut down over the past couple of
decades.
