The numbers can be misleading – at least when it comes to Rhode Island manufacturing.
According to a panel brought together by Providence Business News as part of a "Rhode Island Summit" on Thursday, May 30, declining manufacturing jobs nationally – 72,700 in the first quarter of 2001, and 67,500 in the first quarter of 2002 – don’t tell the whole story. What is often overlooked is the importance of productivity in the sector.
It’s an important distinction to make when trying to maintain one of the state’s oldest industries, said Lee Arnold, director of the Rhode Island Department of Labor and Training, and executive director of the Human Resources Investment Council.
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"People in Rhode Island engaged in manufacturing are likely to remain despite the fact that last year there was a 7 percent reduction in employment," Arnold said at the May 30 summit. "I think that we have bottomed out with 2,000 people … now the industry is pretty stable."
All four panelists – Arnold, John Cronin, executive director of the Rhode Island Manufacturing Extension Services, Christina Zaroogian, a property casualty producer with the East-Greenwich based Mastors & Servant, and Will Tsonos, vice president of Commercial Banking at Citizens – agreed the state’s manufacturing sector is surviving with the help of innovation, technology and teamwork.
"It’s so interesting to see how resilient and diverse manufacturing is today," Cronin said. "We are creating wealth with fewer employees. We are competing not only with technology, but also with teamwork. As we get more productive we have to get smarter."
In the last 20 years manufacturing employment has declined sharply. According to the RIDLT, for the first time in nearly two decades, the state’s manufacturing employment level of 14.3 percent, is nearly equal to the national level of 12.8 percent. Ten years ago, Rhode Island manufacturing employment level was 21.6 percent, compared to the nation’s average of 16.7 percent. The gap was even wider 20 years ago, when the state’s level of 30.5 percent was nearly 10 percent higher than the national manufacturing employment average of 21.5 percent.
Most of those job cuts have affected low-paying manufacturing jobs, as technology and innovation have created a new type of industry.
"As a whole Rhode Island has done a nice job of making the transition," Tsonos said. "The Rhode Island work force is very skilled and they have made the transition from old to new. Some have done it through training… companies have reinvested in themselves. Successful companies continue to invest in themselves and they are better able to handle the new."
But finding a qualified work force can be one of the greatest challenges for Rhode Island’s modern manufacturers. Director of Business Services for the East-Greenwich based Toray Plastics Pierre LaPerriere asked panelists, why, if there are so many manufacturing workers not working, does his company find "slim pickings on a regular basis?"
According to Arnold, many times there is a skill gap, an education gap, or a transportation gap that prevents a worker at one company from working at a different business.
Zaroogian said the result is companies getting more creative in terms of training, and opportunity.
It’s that kind of innovation that Arnold cited when he rebuffed industry critics who say that it’s only a matter of time before manufacturing no longer exists in Rhode Island. Despite predictions that manufacturing was likely to follow the course of agriculture — where employment nationally had dropped from a high of 90 percent in the early 1900s to just over five percent now, Arnold and other panelists remain optimistic.
"It’s certainly true that productivity is up, and that there are fewer people involved," he said. "But it is also true that no country can survive without a manufacturing base."
