Factories still carry area economy

[steven]

The manufacturing sector may be on the decline, but it remains a key component of Western New York's economy.

Manufacturers in the Buffalo-Niagara Falls metropolitan area paid more than $3 billion in wages in 2002, according to a newly released study by the U.S. Census Bureau.

Results of the bureau's 2002 economic census, which collected data from all employers across the nation, are being issued in stages this year. The latest release is a 344-page report on manufacturing in New York.

The Buffalo-Niagara Falls metro, which consists of Erie and Niagara counties, had 1,437 manufacturers as of 2002. Those companies employed 70,972 people. (Manufacturing employment in the two-county area has since declined to about 65,000, based on estimates from the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics.)

The typical manufacturing worker in the Buffalo area earned annual wages of $43,460 three years ago.

The automobile industry accounted for almost one-third of the region's total manufacturing payroll. Fifty-two local companies produced transportation equipment, defined by the Census Bureau as motor-vehicle bodies, engines and parts.

Those businesses had a combined workforce of 17,700 and a collective payroll of $952 million in 2002, equaling 31 percent of all manufacturing wages in Erie and Niagara counties. The typical local worker in the field of transportation equipment earned $53,870 three years ago.

Eight other fields within the local manufacturing sector had total payrolls of more than $100 million in 2002:

Machinery manufacturing: $394 million
Fabricated metal products (including forging, stamping and sheet metal work): $244 million
Food (including breakfast cereal, baked goods and dairy products): $223 million
Chemicals: $200 million
Plastics: $173 million
Printing: $149 million
Pottery, ceramics and concrete products: $126 million
Iron and steel mills: $120 million
Manufacturers in Western New York's six outlying counties chipped in an additional $960 million in payroll in 2002. Chautauqua County led the pack with total manufacturing wages of $431 million.

It was followed by Cattaraugus ($195 million), Genesee ($121 million), Allegany ($110 million), Wyoming ($54 million) and Orleans ($52 million) counties.

The total manufacturing payroll for all of Western New York -- encompassing the Buffalo-Niagara Falls metro and the six outlying counties -- was $4.05 billion in 2002.

The Census Bureau counted 21,066 manufacturing establishments across all of New York state. Those businesses had a combined total of 641,400 employees and a collective payroll of $25.4 billion in 2002, which equaled $39,600 per worker.

http://www.bizjournals.com/buffalo/s...ml?jst=b_ln_hl

[jennifer7]

Very Good & Very Important point

[atotaltotalfan2001]

Originally posted by jennifer7
Very Good & Very Important point

The manufacturing sector may be on the decline, but it remains a key component of Western New York's economy.



But isn't that the problem? Manufacturing in this country is an already nearly extinct animal. It's disappearing before our eyes, roiling our local economy because we are still too dependent on it.

The economies that have done better have moved on, I think, or at least become much more diversified.