NAM says unemployment at crisis level

Manufacturing News, Source : TheManufacturer.com
Published : 14 Jan 2003 22:49

US manufacturing lost another 65,000 jobs during December 2002, and overall payroll employment dropped by 101,000, according to a recent Labor Department report.

Although the overall economy has grown by 3.2% over the past four quarters, output from manufacturing has increased only 0.8%. Jerry Jasinowski, president of the National Association of Manufacturers, said the continued loss of manufacturing jobs “has reached crisis proportions.

“That was the 29th consecutive monthly decline in manufacturing employment and the largest in the last 10 months,” he said. “Since July 2000, we have lost more than two million manufacturing jobs. These are the people who transform raw materials into finished products. They are the most skilled industrial workers, the very heart of our economic power and critical to our competitive leadership in the world marketplace. We simply cannot afford to ignore this ominous trend any longer.”

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