Jobs report calls attention to manufacturing

With the release of today’s jobs report, focus has turned to the manufacturing sector, which displayed modest gains for the third straight month.

Brad Plumer of The Washington Post questions if we can find more manufacturing jobs here in the United States after the loss of more than six million jobs in the sector between 2000 and 2009. Plumer explains that companies like Apple are not considered manufacturers because there is a portion of product assemly that happens outside U.S. borders. Nonetheless, “We can safely say that the decline of manufacturing jobs is a true decline,” Andrew Bernard of Dartmouth’s Tuck School of Business says.

Chad Moutray, chief economist for the National Association of Manufacturers, said “The underlying story here is that manufacturing employment continues to grow at a disappointing pace.”

With an increased focus on domestic minerals production, the mining industry could provide a greater, diverse range of the raw materials crucial to  today’s cutting-edge technologies — creating a more reliable supply-chain for our manufacturers.

Like the spark that starts the fire, minerals and metals mining can ignite the U.S. economy once again.