Manufacturing productivity continues to outpace the gains in the rest of the economy, growing 4 percent a year as state manufacturers adapt their business models to utilize new technology and compete in a global economy.

While all other sectors of the U.S. economy are growing, manufacturing employment is either stagnant or declining. We’re losing the low-skilled, brawn-intensive manufacturing jobs to countries that offer abundant cheap labor, and the plants that...

Manufacturing capacity utilization is at a four-year high, and production continues to climb. Unfortunately, this hasn’t translated into increased employment, as manufacturing companies are finding other ways to increase efficiency and trim costs through technology...

Labor-intensive work that would employ a lot of people is done overseas. The newer manufacturers are kind of lean and mean, and they just can’t replace the jobs. It takes fewer employees to turn out...

These new operations are not likely to create enough jobs to replace the labor-intensive jobs being lost to offshore production. But the recent trend has been a slowing of the manufacturing job losses in North...