ST. CLAIRSVILLE — In 1970, more than 50 percent of a product’s retail price went toward paying the wages of those who manufactured it. Today, only 10 percent of that same item’s cost supports the labor used to produce it, economic development officials said Thursday.
That means far fewer workers are able to manufacture more products, a trend that seems destined to persist as new technologies and machinery continue replacing manual labor. Those who can secure a career in manufacturing today are likely to earn substantially more than their grandparents did, however.
“Just remember: Your future could be very bright in manufacturing,” Melinda Thompson, a 1982 St. Clairsville High School graduate who retired after a successful career at Procter & Gamble, said Thursday during a career information forum for about 400 local high school students at Belmont College.
“There are plenty of manufacturing jobs right here in your backyard,” she added.
The purpose of the event was to demonstrate to students that manufacturing remains a viable career option for those whose parents or grandparents may have lost their manufacturing jobs with the numerous Upper Ohio Valley industrial plants that have closed during the last 15 years.
John Molinaro is president and CEO of the Appalachian Partnership for Economic Growth, an organization formed to promote business expansion in eastern Ohio.
“Forty years ago when we started shipping jobs overseas, more than half of the cost of a manufactured product was in labor. Now, that’s down to about 10 percent,”Molinaro said. “Fewer people make more product because of machines. The jobs in manufacturing today require you to think. It’s a very different world than our parents may have experienced in manufacturing when they were growing up.”
U.S. Rep. Bill Johnson, R-Ohio, said the planned PTT Global Chemical ethane cracker — a potential multi-billion-dollar plant that may be built in the Dilles Bottom area of Belmont County — would bring thousands of construction jobs and hundreds of permanent jobs to the area.
“It is vitally important that we continue the oil and gas development,” he said of the region’s Marcellus and Utica shale industry. “This is providing opportunity for you folks to have a future in this area.”
Johnson said there may be some “stigma” placed on those who cannot or do not attend four-year universities.
“There is a lot of pressure on young people to go to a four-year university, but a lot of them don’t want to do that,” he said. “Some of them want to go into building things and creating things.”
Regarding manufacturing jobs related to the potential cracker, Johnson said, “There is going to be a lot of them — and there will be a variety of them.”
Edward D’Aquila, business manager for Plumbers and Steamfitters Local No. 83, said he hopes the students will consider manufacturing careers, but reminded them it was not easy work.
“I’ve worked in zero-degree weather along the Ohio River,” he said. “You’ve got to go out and work. Nothing is handed to you.”
From The Times Leader | October 21, 2016
