Thursday, June 21, 2012

Life in a Swing State: Manufacturing Matters Here

If you live in an urban area or a service-economy-oriented area where 5% of the workforce is employed in manufacturing, you may not find a single person on your city block who works in manufacturing. Out of sight.  Out of mind.

That's not the case in the "swing vote" areas of  "swing state" Ohio. 

Take Newark, Ohio, for example.  Newark is Ohio's 20th largest city.  It's not rural, for sure, but 30+ miles from Columbus makes it a borderline exurban or suburban place.  One stat showed at least 25% of the workforce in Newark is employed in manufacturing.  That puts the odds pretty good that anyone in Newark is neighbors with manufacturing workers.

Manufacturing matters here.  It truly does.  People know it does.

Connect the dots then.

If manufacturing matters in the swing places in Ohio and it's the swing places in Ohio that could swing the whole election, then manufacturing had better matter to the next President of the United States.

What is a candidate to do?

Promise to embrace manufacturing, invest in skills training, keep building suburban infrastructure, and help the U.S. compete in a "fair" trade environment.

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This is one in a series on Life In A Swing State aimed at pushing Ohio's Swing State status in the state's favor just a little bit.

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