You have probably heard the narrative: since its heyday as the Motor City in the 1950s, globalization has left Detroit in ruins, moving auto-related jobs away to places where wages were cheaper, customers were closer, and climates were nicer. Is it totally true?
Despite huge decline, Michigan is still #1 in US automaking
First, in truth, Detroit and the state of Michigan still have lots of automaking jobs, just a lot fewer than decades ago. The article below shows that Michigan has far more auto jobs--especially assembly jobs, as opposed to sales--than any other state.
http://money.cnn.com/news/specials/storysupplement/stateautoworkers/
But compare the current jobs with the past:
-Detroit lost 90% of its manufacturing jobs since 1950s
-Michigan lost 50% of its manufacturing jobs from 2000-2010
So the decline of Michigan and Detroit has been steep.
Where have Detroit's jobs gone?
In the US, automaking jobs have tended to head for sunnier climates in the "New South" where real estate is cheap. Tennessee, Kentucky, and Alabama in particular have the highest number of auto assembly jobs outside the traditional midwestern automaking core states.
Case in point: Japanese cars, country music, and tacos
Nissan's Smyrna, Tennessee plant is a good example of the shift in US automaking to the south.
In 1980 Nissan opened its first US plant in Smyrna, TN just 20 minutes outside Nashville, the capital of country music, and 10 minutes from Murfreesboro, a slightly run-down country town but home of Tennessee's largest university, Middle Tennessee State. By 1989 the Smyrna plant had produced 1 million vehicles and by 1994 it was named the most-productive auto plant in the US. Today, Smyrna is the only North American factory producing the Nissan Leaf, the only fully-electric mass-market car in the US.
Meanwhile, Nissan also opened a major North American plant in Aguascalientes, Mexico, a booming city that has attracted massive foreign investment and is one of the cleanest, most orderly cities in Mexico.
Today, Nissan has the goal of producing 85% of all Nissan cars sold in the US in North America--whether in the US, Mexico, or Canada--by 2015.
Shifts in auto production to be closer to foreign markets
A major overall trend in manufacturing has been for companies to relocate factories closer to the customers who buy products, rather than making things far away and shipping them thousands of miles.
Case in point: Bangkok, Thailand has become the largest auto-making hub in Southeast Asia, nearly doubling its output in the past 2 years to 2.5 million cars/year. Toyota alone has five factories in Thailand, along with Nissan and Ford.
See
Boom times for Bangkok the "Detroit of Southeast Asia"
http://www.foxnews.com/world/2013/09/08/boom-times-for-detroit-southeast-asia/
Chart of Ford operations worldwide.http://corporate.ford.com/our-company/operations-worldwide/global-operations-list
With Mexican Manufacturing Boom, New Worrieshttp://www.washingtonpost.com/world/the_americas/with-mexican-auto-manufacturing-boom-new-worries/2013/07/01/10dd57e8-d7d9-11e2-b418-9dfa095e125d_story.html
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