Greater Springfield lost 36.9 percent of its manufacturing jobs from 2000 to 2010, the 69th worst showing out of the 100 largest metropolitan areas. Manufacturing jobs grew by only 0.5 percent from the beginning of 2010 to the end of 2011, compared with a 2.7 percent national growth rate.
Westfield , 5/8/12 - Westfield Vocational High School senior Oleg Novenko checks out the machine center program with Bart Aslin. Aslin is with the Society of Manufacturing Engineers and was visiting the schools machine shop.Last week, Bart A. Aslin, CEO of the Society of Manufacturing Engineers, told manufacturing technology students at Westfield Vocational Technical High School that they are learning skills that can take them anywhere.
But everyone hopes that the budding machinists and high-tech manufacturers in Clement D. Fucci’s classroom will be able to build their careers right here in the Pioneer Valley.
Aslin visited Westfield last week to announce that the Vocational Technical High School will receive $15,000 in grants from the Society of Manufacturing Engineers Education Foundation’s PRIME: Partnership Response for Manufacturing Education program. He was in the region for the Mfg4 industry event held last week at the Connecticut Convention Center in Hartford.
“We have a need for skilled workers,” Aslin said. “We want you to know that we think your school is doing a great job. We want you to know that you are setting yourselves up for great careers. Life-changing careers.”
Of the $15,000 grant, $10,000 will go towards equipment and $5,000 will help students to attend SME’s Gateway Academy Summer Day Camp, according to SME.
Aslin followed up by encouraging Westfield students to continue their educations after high school, possibly by taking community college courses in engineering or manufacturing technology.
The Pioneer Valley still has a higher concentration of manufacturing jobs than most other regions of the country, but it’s lost jobs in recent years and seems to be gaining them back more slowly than other regions, according to a new report from The Brookings Institution.
The Springfield metropolitan area, an area defined as most of Hampden, Hampshire and Franklin counties, has 26,479 manufacturing jobs, ranking it 73 out of the 100 largest metro areas in the country, according to Brookings’ Institution Metropolitan Policy Program. Ninety-seven percent of those jobs rank as “very high tech,” according to Brookings.
But Springfield has lost 36.9 percent of its manufacturing jobs in the years between 2000 and 2010, the 69th worst showing out of the 100 largest metropolitan areas. Manufacturing jobs grew by just 0.5 percent from the beginning of 2010 to the end of 2011. That’s compared with a 2.7 percent rate of growth nationwide.
Springfield ranked 64 out of 100 when it comes to manufacturing job growth in 2010 and 2011.
“You haven’t had as big of a bounceback,” said Howard J. Wial, a fellow at Brookings. “It’s because the recovery in the manufacturing sector has been in the auto industry, which is centered in the Midwest. They got hit the hardest, but they have come back the fastest.”
The oil and gas boom also has benefited manufacturers who specialize in making equipment for drilling and pipelines.
Wial was surprised to learn that the migration of manufacturing to the American South has largely stopped. The biggest gains were in the northern Midwest, probably due to the recovery of the auto industry.
He also noted that manufacturing wages are higher in metro areas with a strong “cluster” of manufacturers.
“Companies learn from each other,” Wial said. “If they are all in the same area, they make each other better.”
The Pioneer Valley’s cluster of companies doing precision manufacturing is strong, said Stephen J. Ebbrecht, director of sales for the industrial lubricants division of A. R. Sandri Inc. in Greenfield. Ebbrecht attended the Mfg4 event in Hartford to make sales contacts. Mfg4 replaced what had been the annual Eastec trade show at the Eastern States Exposition in West Springfield. Eastec will return in 2013.
But Ebbrecht said smaller machine shops are getting squeezed by the larger manufacturers that subcontract out the work.
“I know that margin is getting squeezed,” he said. “So everyone is trying to get as efficient as they can get.”
Manufacturers also need more capacity and James H. Cepican, sales manager for Marubeni Citizen-Cincom Inc. of Agawam, is trying to get it to them.
Cepican and his team sell milling equipment capable of shaping metal to tolerances of a millionth of an inch or less. It’s critical stuff for the aircraft, medical implant and, increasingly, the clean energy industries. One machine can sell for $200,000 to $350,000.
“I think less work is going offshore,” Cepican said from his company’s display at Mfg4. “We’re doing more with clean energy.”