Manufacturing employment in the Southeast: examining the last 30 years

U.S. manufacturing has been in decline for the last forty years, bringing real economic impact. This paper examines the Southern region experience. Variation in rate of decline and industry evolution are shown across states. The important transportation equipment manufacturing industry is explored in more detail. The overall takeaway is that manufacturing looks different across the Southeast Various regions of the United States have experienced different paths of declines in manufacturing employment since the 1979 national manufacturing employment peak. This article focuses on the changes in manufacturing employment in the Southeastern United States from 1990 to 2019 and is part of a series describing manufacturing trends by Census regions. The Southeast region is large and diverse, encompassing 17 states.1 However, five states make up 58.5 percent of the Southeast region’s manufacturing employment as of the end of 2019: Texas (21.0 percent), North Carolina (11.1 percent), Georgia (9.3 percent), Florida (9.0 percent), and Tennessee (8.2 percent).