An Inside Look at Pennsylvania’s Manufacturing Industry Trends for 2023 and Beyond
The growth in American manufacturing and onshoring has continued throughout 2023. As one of the nation’s main manufacturing hubs, the Keystone State is no exception to the trend: putting it into perspective, production output statewide has increased by 49.3% over the last fifteen years alone. That’s a whole lot of quality-built, USA-made products – $116 billion worth, to be more exact.
One of the leading industrial fabricators for the Reading, Pennsylvania region and beyond, Alloy Fabrication has proudly contributed to our state’s manufacturing sector for 35+ years and going strong. Below, we take a look behind the curtain of PA manufacturing trends, moving beyond the numbers to see how the industry is woven into the fabric of our region’s economy and livelihood.
Putting Numbers Behind Trends in the Pennsylvania Manufacturing Sector:
- According to a recent in-depth report released by the Northeastern Pennsylvania Industrial Resource Center (NEPIRC), Pennsylvania is the sixth most productive state in the nation according to total manufacturing output. At $116 billion in 2022, that high level of productivity accounts for 13.8% of the state’s total GSP.
- Perhaps due to its proximity to the Midwest region, Pennsylvania is often falsely considered to be a farming state. In fact, the agricultural industry is extremely small compared to PA’s manufacturing sector. At 0.7% GSP, you would have to combine agriculture with the entire construction industry (3.9%), the transportation/warehousing sector (4.4%), utilities (1.9%), as well as mining/resource extraction (2.2%) all together to roughly equal the GSP of industrial manufacturing by itself (13.8%).
- We also hold the sixth position in terms of manufacturing jobs, employing 4.5% of America’s total manufacturing workforce. For 2022, that equates to more than 575,000 full-time jobs paying out nearly $41 billion in annual wages to Pennsylvanians.
- Since 2007, the Pennsylvania manufacturing industry’s total output has grown substantially at 49.3%, increasing from $77.8 billion to $116.3 billion annually. While that level of growth is impressive in itself, it’s even more so in context: it far surpassed the growth levels of so-called competing states including Michigan and Ohio (both showing 39.6% growth) as well North Carolina (28.1%) and New York (22.2%).
The Importance of Industry for the Pennsylvania Community and Economy:
In many ways, the success of Pennsylvania’s manufacturing industry is horizontally integrated, rather than vertically. So essentially, when the manufacturing sector does well economically, that success is shared and spread across many different industries – a rising tide that helps raise everyone’s boat, so to speak.
This is true because manufacturing supports so many downstream industries – the shipping, warehousing and logistics industries directly, retail and service sector positions further down the line, etc.
Moreover, a strong backbone in manufacturing is imperative for our state to remain not only competitive, but at the forefront of cutting-edge technological industries such as aerospace, alternative energy, and bio/medical tech. Build the infrastructure to build the products, and the innovation will come.
One of the Reading, PA Region’s Premier Industrial Fabrication Companies
Alloy Fabrication has proudly served Pennsylvania and the greater Mid-Atlantic Region with quality industrial steel fabrication services since 1987. Utilizing a 14,000 sq.-ft facility packed with the latest production tools and technologies, we can fabricate virtually any custom steel component in-house with superior American manufacturing quality and precision.
