manufacturing

Feudal Future Podcast — The Future of Space Defense

Joel Kotkin and Marshall Toplansky — Wed, 24 Sep 2025 11:41:15 -0400

The landscape of American defense manufacturing has transformed dramatically since World War II—and not for the better. What happens when a nation with the world’s most advanced military technology can’t produce enough conventional artillery shells to supply Ukraine while maintaining its own reserves?

Listen on Apple Podcast
More podcast episodes & show notes at JoelKotkin.com

Watch this Episode

Support Our Work

The Center for Demographics and Policy focuses on research and analysis of global, national, and regional demographic trends and explores policies that might produce favorable demographic results over time. It involves Chapman students in demographic research under the supervision of the Center’s senior staff.

Students work with the Center’s director and engage in research that will serve them well as they look to develop their careers in business, the social sciences, and the arts. Students also have access to our advisory board, which includes distinguished Chapman faculty and major demographic scholars from across the country and the world.

For additional information, please contact Mahnaz Asghari, Associate Director of the Center for Demographics and Policy, at (714) 744-7635 or asghari@chapman.edu

Tweet thoughts: @joelkotkin, @mtoplansky, #FeudalFuture #BeyondFeudalism

Buy Joel’s latest book, ‘The Coming of Neo-Feudalism‘

This show is presented by the Chapman Center for Demographics and Policy, which focuses on research and analysis of global, national and regional demographic trends and explores policies that might produce favorable demographic results over time.

Feudal Future Podcast: Populism Across Decades and Demographics

Joel Kotkin and Marshall Toplansky — Tue, 27 Aug 2024 23:20:04 -0400

Discover how the heartland of America is transforming its political landscape on the Feudal Future podcast. Join us as we sit down with experts like William Binning and Michael Lind to unravel the historical shifts in Midwestern populism, tracing its journey from left-wing origins to its current right-leaning momentum. Learn about the pivotal role of Ohio and influential figures like James Traficant in catalyzing this political realignment, and gain insights into the broader implications for disenfranchised groups, including middle-class manufacturing workers and small business owners.

Listen on Apple Podcast
More podcast episodes & show notes at JoelKotkin.com

Watch this Episode

Support Our Work

For additional information, please contact Mahnaz Asghari, sponsored project analyst for the Office of Research, at (714) 744-7635 or asghari@chapman.edu.

Tweet thoughts: @joelkotkin, @mtoplansky, #FeudalFuture #BeyondFeudalism

Learn more about Joel’s book ‘The Coming of Neo-Feudalism‘

Nvidia’s Boom is Not a Straightforward American Success Story

Joel Kotkin — Tue, 30 May 2023 11:38:29 -0400

In what has been a bleak year for Silicon Valley, the sudden surge in the value of tech company Nvidia, driven by its mastery of chips used for artificial intelligence, may seem like a ray of hope. Yet if this success may reward the firm’s owners and employees, as well as the tech-oriented financial speculators, the blessings may not rebound so well to the industry’s workforce overall, or to the broader interests of the West.

Nvidia’s rise as the first trillion-dollar semiconductor firm reinforces the de-industrialisation of the tech economy. Unlike the traditional market leaders, like Intel, Nvidia does not manufacture its own chips, choosing instead to rely largely on the expertise of Taiwanese semiconductors. It has limited blue-collar employment. Intel, a big manufacturer, has 120,000 employees — more than four times as many as the more highly valued Nvidia, which epitomises the increasingly non-material character of the Valley.

Read the rest of this piece at Unherd.

Joel Kotkin is the author of The Coming of Neo-Feudalism: A Warning to the Global Middle Class. He is the Roger Hobbs Presidential Fellow in Urban Futures at Chapman University and Executive Director for Urban Reform Institute. Learn more at joelkotkin.com and follow him on Twitter @joelkotkin.

Nissan Chooses Jackson, Mississippi to Produce Two New EVs

Wendell Cox — Wed, 02 Mar 2022 18:07:10 -0500

Automotive News reports that Nissan will produce two new electric vehicles in metropolitan Jackson, Mississippi at its suburban Canton assembly plant. Nissan announced that: “it will invest $500 million to transform its … assembly plant into a ‘center for EV manufacturing and technology’” In addition, “The investment will include the addition of battery pack assembly operations in Canton.”

The plant will produce Nissan and Infiniti models. Read more here.

Wendell Cox is principal of Demographia, an international public policy firm located in the St. Louis metropolitan area. He is a founding senior fellow at the Urban Reform Institute, Houston, a Senior Fellow with the Frontier Centre for Public Policy in Winnipeg and a member of the Advisory Board of the Center for Demographics and Policy at Chapman University in Orange, California. He has served as a visiting professor at the Conservatoire National des Arts et Metiers in Paris. His principal interests are economics, poverty alleviation, demographics, urban policy and transport. He is co-author of the annual Demographia International Housing Affordability Survey and author of Demographia World Urban Areas.

Mayor Tom Bradley appointed him to three terms on the Los Angeles County Transportation Commission (1977-1985) and Speaker of the House Newt Gingrich appointed him to the Amtrak Reform Council, to complete the unexpired term of New Jersey Governor Christine Todd Whitman (1999-2002). He is author of War on the Dream: How Anti-Sprawl Policy Threatens the Quality of Life and Toward More Prosperous Cities: A Framing Essay on Urban Areas, Transport, Planning and the Dimensions of Sustainability.

Metro Columbus Lands Massive Intel Plants

Wendell Cox — Fri, 21 Jan 2022 11:45:45 -0500

Governor Mike DeWine announced today (January 21, 2022) that Intel will build two semi-conductor plants in suburban Licking County, in the Columbus metropolitan area. The plants will be located in New Albany’s International Business Park, which already has Google, Amazon and Facebook as tenants. The plants are to be opened by 2025.

The Governor said that the plant will be the largest private sector investment in Ohio history. The $20 billion plant is projected to increase Ohio’s Gross Domestic product by $2.8 billion.

The plant is expected to employ 3,000 initially, at an average wage of $135,000, while secondarily generating 20,000 additional jobs statewide.

Representative Troy Balderson, who represents the plant location in the US Congress said “We are allowing ourselves to be held hostage by the imbalance of foreign chip production. It’s past time to bolster this production here at home.”

Already, the Columbus metropolitan area had catapulted to leadership as a domestic migration destination, adding 53,000 net domestic migrants between 2010 and 2020, the most of any Midwestern metropolitan area.

Jaw-Dropping News: Companies Investing $48.1 Billion in New Factories in Texas

Joe Vranich — Sun, 28 Nov 2021 16:21:56 -0500

Economic development professionals in Texas will remember this November for a long time as the month saw announcements for three record-breaking, colossal construction projects. It’s fair to call them “Texas-sized.”

First, Texas Instruments (TI) said it will build a $30 billion semiconductor fabrication plant in Sherman, which is about midway between Dallas and the Oklahoma border (an area often referred to as Texoma).

Next, Samsung Electronics, Co., Ltd., announced that it will construct a $17 billion semiconductor manufacturing facility in Taylor, which is near Austin.

Also, Tesla just revealed that its Gigafactory in Austin – where construction and interior finishing work is underway – revealed that its cost is estimated at $1.1 billion.

The announcements totaling $48.1 billion were announced in only an eight-day period, which may be a record in the world of economic development. I can speak only for myself, but I don’t recall anything of this magnitude occurring in such a short time span in any state.

Read the rest of this piece at Spectrum Location Solutions.

Joe Vranich helps businesses make location decisions driven by growth, consolidation, market changes, or a need to relocate to places with more favorable business climates.

Manufacturing Executives Predict Jobs will Return to the U.S.

Mark Schill — Sun, 18 Dec 2011 11:23:12 -0500

A recent poll of 3,000 C-level manufacturing company executives found that 85% see certain manufacturing functions returning to the U.S., citing increasing costs overseas (37%), logistics/delivery demands (20%), quality issues (7%) and other reasons (37%).

From the Cook Associates Survey:

85 percent of manufacturing executives see the possibility of certain manufacturing operations returning to the U.S., with 37 percent citing overseas costs as the major factor. Nineteen percent cited logistics and 36 percent stipulated other reasons, including economic/political issues, quality and safety concerns, patriotism and overseas skills shortages for highly technical manufacturing processes.

Cook Associates Executive Search polled nearly 3,000 manufacturing executives primarily in small- to mid-sized U.S. companies from October 13 through November 18, 2011. Participants consisted of C-level executives (CEO, CFO, COO) and key functional Vice Presidents (Operations, Manufacturing, Supply Chain).The survey data was supplemented by written comments submitted by individual executives.

The survey identified low-volume, high-precision, high-mix operations, automated manufacturing and engineered products requiring technology improvements or innovation as the primary forms of manufacturing returning to the States.

Interactive Data Visualization: The Connection Between Manufacturing Jobs and Exports

Rob Sentz — Fri, 21 Oct 2011 17:55:35 -0400

By Hank Robison and Rob Sentz

We recently observed that there are only about 50 manufacturing sectors out of 472 (6-digit NAICS) that actually gained jobs over the past 10 years. This made us wonder because we keep hearing that manufacturing output is actually improving. Politicians and policymakers tend to assume that an uptick in output would naturally result in an uptick in employment. So we investigated.

What we found

We placed national export data on top of job totals for each of the 472 manufacturing sectors, and found that manufacturing exports (inflation-adjusted) actually grew by 56% from 02-10 while manufacturing jobs contracted by 23%. Growth in exports have clearly not resulted in more domestic jobs. See the interactive graphic at the bottom of this post for a visualization.

Across the manufacturing sectors we are actually seeing a predominantly inverse relationship between jobs and exports. To explore this further, we placed each of the 472 industries into one of four categories (again see the graphic):
1) Those that gained both exports and jobs,
2) Those that gained exports but lost jobs,
3) Those that lost exports but gained jobs, and
4) Those that lost both exports and jobs.

Some observations

Those advocating for increased exports as a way of resuscitating jobs in manufacturing need to look at this data. Only 11% of all manufacturing sectors showed gains in jobs and exports, which is not a huge surprise given manufacturing decline. 19% lost jobs AND exports at the same time. Now here is the stat really worth noting — 71% of all manufacturing sectors increased their exports while decreasing their domestic workforce.

There are some political ramifications here. The Obama Administration has proposed exports as a key to kick-starting the U.S. labor market (see this post from Brookings). Economists and policy experts as well as all of us here at EMSI are huge fans of improving exports. Exports are a principal source of foreign exchange and an important driver for U.S. goods. Export industries also tend to pay higher wages and connect with the rest of the economy through greater multiplier effects, which mean they are key for income and job formation.

However, as the data suggests things are not that simple. Domestic manufacturers appear to be outsourcing large parts of their work to foreign suppliers. In the process, they employ fewer domestic workers but become more competitive in foreign markets. As a result, exports go up while employment goes down. This is something that policymakers need to consider before pinning too much hope on exports as a way of reviving manufacturing sector employment.

Conclusion

There may be a conflict of goals here. On one hand we want high-wage, high-benefit jobs; on the other, “full employment.” But in manufacturing can we have both? If wages, and benefits are pushing producers to outsource then either wages go down (an unattractive prospect), or we adopt policies that spawn productivity growth needed to support high-wages. Are there any other choices?

Data Graphic

In this interactive graphic, you can explore EMSI’s data on manufacturing jobs and exports. The data is based on 4-digit NAICS manufacturing sectors. NOTE: 6-digit data was used in the previous analyis.

Click on the chart to highlight an industry or use the drop-down box. Data in the top half of the graphic shows percentage change in jobs (on the y-axis) and exports (on the x-axis). The bottom line graph simply compares manufacturing jobs and exports over time.

As we highlighted above, 71% of all manufacturing sectors increased their exports while decreasing their domestic workforce from 2002 to 2010.

For more information, email Rob Sentz.

China: Two Modernizations (Decentralization and Living Away from the Job)

Wendell Cox — Sun, 12 Sep 2010 14:08:25 -0400

American and European planners have long sought to improve the "jobs-housing" balance, seeking to place residents and jobs within walking or cycling distance. Of course, planners don't place people anywhere. Not surprisingly, their efforts have largely failed, from the new towns of the London area, where people travel about as far to work as anywhere else, to fabled failures of Stockholm, where high rise housing close to suburban employment centers now houses migrants who tend to have far lower incomes than native Swedes.

In the time of Mao Zedong, China had achieved perhaps the ultimate in the jobs-housing balance. Companies provided housing for their workers, who were able to walk to their jobs in the same compound. However, the economic reforms instituted by Deng Xiaoping and his successors has led to an abandonment of this model (Danwei housing) and millions of Chinese households have been lifted out of poverty into affluence. Most Chinese households do not aspire to "living on top" of the factory or office.

Foxconn (Hon Hai Precision Industry), one of the world's largest companies, is among the last to provide large amounts of housing to its workers. In its Shenzhen "Long Hua Campus," which covers only one square mile, Foxconn employs 450,000 people (Figure). They are housed on the campus or nearby in company provided units.

Shenzhen directly borders Hong Kong and Dongguan, which borders the Guangzhou-Foshan urban area. All together, these contiguous Pearl River Delta urban areas, along with others down the western shore to Macao have nearly 50 million people, more than live in any geographic area of the same size anywhere else in the world. These Guangdong province urban areas, along with the special economic regions of Hong Kong and Macau have become one of the world's leading manufacturing and export areas. Shenzhen itself has been estimated to have a population of between 10 million and 15 million, depending on how the migrant workers are estimated. Shenzhen and other major manufacturing centers of China are estimated to house as many as 200 millions migrants from other parts of China (especially rural areas), coming to work in jobs that pay far higher wages than can be earned at home.

Foxconn itself is the world's largest manufacturer of consumer electronic technology, producing Apple's I-Pod and I-Phone and making products for Dell, Hewlett-Packard, Sony, as well as the Nintendo, Wii entertainment systems.

According to a report in The Wall Street Journal, Foxconn has plans to abandon its Danwei housing and move away from its "perfect" jobs-housing balance to the spatial arrangements that Chinese, Americans and Europeans routinely choose --- to work where they like and live where they like.

Foxconn has had its share of difficulties. There have been the multiple employee suicides at the Long Hua Campus. The company has faced rising costs in its Pearl River Delta operations, including higher wage costs. In its attempt to retain competitiveness, Foxconn is seriously rethinking its business model and appears likely not only get out of the housing business, but will also move many of its operations into central and western China, where costs and wages are lower. This also makes sense in relation to government policy, which seeks to develop the center and west.

Overall, Taiwan headquartered Foxconn employs 920,000 people in China, the equivalent of the entire work force in the Portland or Kansas City metropolitan areas.

Foxconn plans to increase its workforce in China from 920,000 to 1,300,000 and intends for many of its employees to be in new facilities in places like Chengdu (capital of Sichuan), Wuhan (capital of Hubei), Zhengzhou (capital of Henan) and Chongqing (capital of the provincial level Chongqing municipality). Foxconn's decentralization, and the location of other new and expanded businesses in the center and west is strongly supported by China's substantial infrastructure investment. The nation already has more than 40,000 miles of interstate equivalent highways. When all of the gaps are completed, trucks will be able to reach east coast ports from Zhengzhou or Wuhan in about days drive and little more than two days from Chongqing and Chengdu.

At the same time, corporate executives can get to Beijing, Shanghai and the Pearl River Delta and other East Coast urban areas in 2.5 hours or less through some of the world's most modern airports.

Finally, the more decentralized operations will allow the migrant workers to live much closer to their homes, rather than having to travel all the way to the East Coast. This will make more frequent visits to rural villages and families possible.

----

Photo: Wuhan (photo by author)

Maps of United States Manufacturing and Finance Industry

Mark Schill — Fri, 21 Nov 2008 02:25:16 -0500

For our War of the Regions piece I went through BLS data and calculated location quotients for a few key diverging industries, namely manufacturing and securities, commodities and investments side of the finance industry. These are the kind of numbers that really benefit from geographic visualization.

A LQ tells us not where the most jobs are in any given industry, but how much of a state's employment is clustered in the given industry.

I've been following FortiusOne for a while but this is the first time I've gotten a chance to play around with their GEOCommons Finder! and Maker!, a new social production platform for agglomerating, sharing and visualizing geographic data. It's a fantastic platform.

Click on the map images here to explore them on the GEOCommons platform. You can see a lot of dark color in the rust belt, but at this point, the states of Indiana, Wisconsin, Arkansas, Iowa, Alabama, and Mississippi are at or ahead of Michigan and Ohio in state dependence on Manufacturing. Part of this is due to growth in the South and Great Plains, and part is due to manufacturing job losses in the Rust Belt, causing the concentration there to slip.

Finance here is limited to Securities, Commodity Contracts, and Other Financial Investments and Related Activities (NAICS 523). Not surprisingly, this industry is clustered in the Northeast. You see Illinois, Minnesota, and Colorado shaded darker due to the role of Chicago, Minneapolis, and Denver as regional trade centers.

Take some time to explore GEOCommons and some of the other visualizations created by others, and watch for more maps in this space as we do the same.