LANSING – Advanced manufacturing now accounts for more than 10 percent of all employment in Michigan and the value of the employment has grown substantially in the state at the same time the economy weakened, a report commissioned by the University Research Corridor contends.
The report also said the role the state’s three largest research universities – Michigan State University, the University of Michigan and Wayne State University – is a vital element of that growth. The report said the three schools spent more than $425 million in active research topics at the schools in 2009.
And the industry has grown to the point that average wages at advanced manufacturing companies outpace all other elements of the economy, and that one-third of all advanced manufacturing jobs in the Midwest are in Michigan.
The report was prepared by the East Lansing-based Anderson Economic Group for the University Research Corridor.
In 2007, advanced manufacturing accounted for more than 381,000 workers in Michigan, or 10.3 percent of the state’s total payroll. In the Midwest, advanced manufacturing accounts for 9.5 percent of total employment and in the United States as a whole accounts for 7.9 percent of total employment.
The figures are more impressive when looking at the value of the total payroll advanced manufacturing presents to the state. In 2007, it represented 16.2 percent of all payroll.
The average annual wages of workers in advanced manufacturing totaled $64,122 a year, according to the report. For all manufacturing, average wages were $51,701, and for all jobs in the state wages average $40,935.
The state’s progress in developing advanced manufacturing was not a straight-line success during the decade, the report said, as total employment in advanced manufacturing firms did drop by some 10 percent from 2003 to 2007, but that compared to a total drop in manufacturing jobs of nearly 15 percent during the same time.
The value of the total payroll in advanced manufacturing did increase during the same time the value of all manufacturing payroll fell, the report said.
The role the three major research universities are playing is critical to the growth of advanced manufacturing to the state, the report said. The universities are engaged in a number of different initiatives that have the potential to have a major impact on the growth of the industry and overall economic growth in Michigan.
Those initiatives include the facility for rare isotope beams at MSU, the Great Lakes Bioenergy Research Center being developed by MSU and the University of Wisconsin, and the engineering research center for wireless integrated microsystems being developed by both MSU and U-M. All in all, the report outlined more than 40 different initiatives conducted by the universities individually, in partnership with each other or in partnership with corporations to help boost development of advanced manufacturing in the state.
That has resulted in an average of some 20 new advanced manufacturing firms either starting or relocating to the state a year in the last several years, the report said.
MSU President Lou Anna Simon said that while manufacturing will continue to play a critical role in the economy, it will need workers with greater skills. Universities are helping to provide for that need both through research and education, she said.
This story was provided by Gongwer News Service. To subscribe, click on Gongwer.Com
a>>
