WASHINGTON—Trade pressure and faltering U.S. competitiveness, not automation, were the main reasons the U.S. lost 5.7 million manufacturing jobs between 2000 and 2010, according to a new report from the Information Technology and Innovation Foundation.
McKinsey & Co. surveyed more than 365,000 employees at 161 companies worldwide. The survey assessed how various organizational and leadership characteristics affect a company’s health.
NEW YORK—The United States sits just behind China in terms of manufacturing competitiveness in 2016, and is expected to overtake the country by 2020, according to a study by consulting firm Deloitte Touche Tohmatsu.
CHICAGO—The rise of the U.S. dollar against the euro and other world currencies over the past year has reduced the cost-competitiveness of U.S. manufacturing compared with economies such as Germany, France, Japan, Australia and Brazil. However, the U.S. still maintains a significant cost advantage over these economies, and therefore manufacturers are unlikely to shift production to other nations, according to The Boston Consulting Group.
The U.S. manufacturing workforce is among the most productive in the world. U.S. manufacturing productivity (measured as output per hour) increased 2.5 percent in 2014, according to the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics.
BEIJING—The number of industrial robots in use in China will more than double over the next two years—from 182,000 today to 428,000 by 2017—thus overtaking the robot populations of either North America or the EU’s five largest economies.
KNOXVILLE, TN—Innovative manufacturers are targeting schools to let young people know there’s more to manufacturing than pulling levers on an assembly line.
BOSTON—A new ranking of the competitiveness of the world’s top 25 exporting countries says the United States is once again a “rising star” of global manufacturing thanks to falling domestic natural gas prices, rising worker productivity and a lack of upward wage pressure.