< Previousemployed in manufacturing. Industry employment was concentrated mainly in Northeastern, Mid-Atlantic and Great Lakes states and in cities like Gary, Detroit, Cleveland, Bu alo, Pittsburgh, Newark and Baltimore. By , however, the share of workers in manufacturing had dipped to less than %, and by it had fallen to %. Meanwhile, jobs in the services sector increased from % of the workforce to % between and . “As the economy shifted from manufacturing to services during the th century, the geography of manufacturing shifted to the Southeastern and Central states, where labor costs were lower and subsidies were more attractive to industry,” the report states. “As of , it was the largest employer in states, including seven Southeastern states: Alabama, Arkansas, Kentucky, Mississippi, North Carolina, South Carolina and Tennessee. However, by , the industry had fallen from the ranks as a top employer.” 3 Trends Costing U.S. Factory Jobs ree connected trends accounted for the bulk of factory job losses, according to CEW: a decline in share of economic output as the role of services in the U.S. economy grew; a decline in the share of the workforce as the industry adopted automation and encountered more intense international competition; and a rise in output per worker that enabled manufacturing to increase its overall output. Increased foreign trade and o shoring also contributed to steep manufacturing job losses, particularly after , the report noted. 60% 50% 40% 30% 20% 10% 0% 1940 1950 1960 1970 1980 1990 2000 2010 2016 Administrative, leisure, food and other Educational services Financial Activities, real estate, professional and management services Health services Source: Georgetown University Center and the Workforce analysis of Ruggles et al, IPUMS USA, 2018 Employment in services has increased from 21% of U.S. employment to 55% between 1940 and 2016. 50% 40% 30% 20% 10% 0% 1940 1950 1960 1970 1980 1990 2000 2010 2016 Agriculture and miningManufacturing Employment in agriculture, mining and manufacturing dropped from 42% of U.S. workers in 1940 to 12% in 2016. Despite the fact that manufacturing is the largest employer in only two states, it still is the top provider of good jobs for workers without a bachelor’s degree in 35 states.” — Anthony P. Carnevale, Director, CEW Despite the fact that manufacturing is the largest employer Despite the fact that manufacturing is the largest employer in only two states, it still is the top provider of good jobs in only two states, it still is the top provider of good jobs Despite the fact that manufacturing is the largest employer in only two states, it still is the top provider of good jobs Despite the fact that manufacturing is the largest employer Despite the fact that manufacturing is the largest employer in only two states, it still is the top provider of good jobs Despite the fact that manufacturing is the largest employer 56 JULY 2019 SI T E S E L E C T IO N S I T E S E L E C T I O N JULY 2019 57 “Despite the fact that manufacturing is the largest employer in only two states, it still is the top provider of good jobs for workers without a bachelor’s degree in states,” said Anthony P. Carnevale, lead author of the report and CEW director. Moreover, the report adds, the “continued industrial strength in Indiana and Wisconsin refl ects the enduring legacy of manufacturing in the Midwest.” According to the National Association of Manufacturers, Indiana leads all states with % of its workers employed in manufacturing jobs, followed by Wisconsin with %. e rest of the top fi ve includes Michigan at .%, Iowa at .% and Alabama at .%. By contrast, the District of Columbia has the lowest share of workers in factory jobs, at just .%. e rest of the bottom fi ve includes Hawaii at .%, New Mexico at .%, Wyoming at .% and Nevada at .%. According to the Wisconsin Policy Forum, the Badger State had , manufacturing workers as of November , up , jobs from November . Indiana, meanwhile, had , manufacturing jobs in , according to the Indiana Manufacturers Association. Neil Ridley, state initiative director for CEW, says there are concrete steps that states Manufacturing was the largest source of employment in 15 states in 1940. By 2000, the manufacturing sector had shifted to the southeastern and central states but remained the largest employer in 18 states. 35-45% 25-34% 15-24% 5-14% 35-45% 25-34% 15-24% 5-14% Source: Georgetown University Center and the Workforce analysis of Ruggles et al, IPUMS USA, 2018 Note: Figure features only states in which manufacturing was the largest source of employment in 2000. Despite the fact that manufacturing is the largest employer in only two states, it still is the top provider of good jobs for workers without a bachelor’s degree in 35 states.” -— Anthony P. Carnevale, Director, CEW (continued on page ) Manufacturing was the largest source of employment in 15 states in 1940. By 2000, the manufacturing sector had shifted to the southeastern and central states but remained the largest employer in 18 states.INVESTMENT PROFILE: ST. TAMMANY PARISH, LOUISIANA As a new economic development vision is unveiled in St. Tammany Parish, the action is already well under way. Ever since Hurricane Katrina, St. Tammany Parish on the north shore of Lake Ponchartrain has seen companies and residents move in as the area enhanced its reputation as a bedroom community. But a look around shows a lot going on beyond residential. In fact, the Bedroom Community Index conceived by Conway Advisory Consultant Collin Perciballi and published by SiteSelection.com in , when cross-hatched with data from Conway Analytics, shows St. Tammany ranked in the healthy middle among the nation’s , counties — not too employment-heavy and not too “bedroomy” — according to a matrix of factors that include commuting patterns, retirement demographics, retail concentration and corporate facility investment projects. As such, St. Tammany is home to the best of both worlds: e parish population is nearing ,, with growth of about , over the past fi ve years and another , projected to come over the next four years. It has high- performing schools, low crime rates and a high proportion of family households (%). It also has a healthy number of growing companies serving as primary employers. Among them are Dallas-based transportation infrastructure fi rm Arcosa, Diversifi ed Foods & Seasonings, Textron, Florida Marine, Chevron (whose regional corporate HQ came to the parish years ago), Associated Wholesale Grocers, MECO and Hornbeck Off shore Services, among others. From a local economy formerly based on delivering services to residents, today’s projects show healthy employer representation and investment across a number of sectors including logistics, as fi rms take advantage of the parish’s proximity to both New Orleans and to major multimodal transportation routes, such as the convergence of I-, I- and I-. Arcosa — formerly Trinity Industries — is 58 JULY 2019 SI T E S E L E C T IO N by ADAM BRUNS adam.br uns @ site s ele c tion.c om Amid a number of positive quality-of-life indicators, St. Tammany Parish is among the top ve most highly educated parishes in Louisiana. Photo courtesy of St. Tammany Corp. S I T E S E L E C T I O N JULY 2019 59 This Investment Profile — the first in a series exploring opportunities in St. Tammany Parish — was published under the auspices of St. Tammany Corporation, the economic development organization for St. Tammany Parish. For more information, visit www.sttammanycorp.org. one of several major international employers operating in the parish, and is now building barges with more than 200 employees. Diversified operates a fully automated kettle-cook facility in Madisonville. The thriving company is known for supplying all the spices for the Popeye’s chicken restaurant company, and is poised for additional expansion in the next few years, says Chris Masingill, CEO of St. Tammany Corporation. Inflection Point Masingill, formerly federal co-chairman of the Delta Regional Authority, says momentum in St. Tammany “has created a sense of growth beyond just being a place to live and raise a family.” That rise has reached a unique inflection point in Thrive St. Tammany 2023 — the five-year economic development strategic plan that will serve as the roadmap for the future of economic development in the parish. Masingill says the plan’s acronym isn’t just a handy verb: It harkens to the organization’s values of being T ransformational, H onest, R esults- driven, I ntentional, V ital and, perhaps most important, E ngaged. “We want to be engaged with our partners and stakeholders,” he says, noting the important roles played by institutions such as Northshore Technical Community College. “We believe in being in the solution business, and we want people to know we operate at the speed of business.” Automotive supplier Dana Inc. is a case in point for thriving. In December 2018, Stirling Properties and St. Tammany Parish community leaders broke ground for the new Dana Inc. Service and Assembly Center at Fremaux Park, a 350-acre mixed-use project in Slidell. “This new facility will grow our service and repair business, while expanding our capabilities to manufacture gears on-site, reducing lead times for our customers,” said Dave Hunt, director of service and manufacturing operations for Dana Off-highway Drive and Motion Technologies. “A project of this scope — with projected growth to double in size and employment — is a tremendous opportunity for Slidell and the entire parish,” said Greg Cromer, mayor of Slidell. “Fremaux Park is a great development with retail, residential, and business all combined. It’s what we want to do — live, work, and play in one place.” Bringing things together seems to be contagious. “Business and political leadership came together and said, ‘Let’s write a new chapter for St. Tammany and the Northshore,” says Masingill of the Thrive St. Tammany 2023 plan. “St. Tammany Parish is already a competitive place for business and industry. Now we have an economic development structure in place to support that, double down and invest in our future.” Clusters to Support, Clusters to Explore Part of the Thrive St. Tammany 2023 plan is a focus on four established target industries and three emerging industries: EM ER G I N G C L U S T ER S Construction Products & Services Water TransportationOil & Gas Production and Transportation Automotive E X I S TI NG C L U S TE RS Marketing, Design & Publishing TechBusiness Servicesand communities can take to boost manufacturing employment. “One approach that some states are taking is to encourage partnerships between industry and technical colleges on the ground in those manufacturing cluster areas,” he says. “Programs where workers can earn community college degrees and technical certifi cates while working with a manufacturing fi rm can be a win-win for the worker and the fi rm and position the workforce for better jobs. ose kinds of initiatives are very important. Kentucky is a good example. ey have excellent partnerships between educational institutions and Toyota, among other employers.” Tricia Braun, deputy secretary for the Wisconsin Economic Development Corp., says Wisconsin has bucked the nationwide trend of manufacturing job losses by focusing on the three T’s: talent, training and technical colleges. “We incorporate higher education into our workforce development to create a cohesive plan to build our pipeline of talent,” she says. “We’re also working to attract talent to Wisconsin. We have run ads in Chicago encouraging young adults to pursue rewarding careers up north. We’ve also focused on recruiting alumni and transitioning veterans. We are creating best practices that other states are now wanting to follow.” Forecast: U.S. to Lose Another 253K Jobs e report on manufacturing job migration patterns came just two weeks after CEW released a related study, “Upskilling and Downsizing in American Manufacturing,” which found that workers with postsecondary education now outnumber workers with a high school diploma or less in the industry. e key fi nding was a dramatic one: “Workers with associate’s degrees were the only group without a bachelor’s degree to see net gains in good manufacturing jobs — about , — between and .” e report also found that “about % of manufacturing workers have an industry certifi cate or license, and those with one of these credentials are more likely to have a good job than those who do not have one.” e future may not be so bright, though. e report cautioned that “manufacturing is not expected to be a major job machine in the future, with employment expected to decline % — or by , net jobs — as of .” Neil Ridley is state initiative director for CEW. Tricia Braun is deputy secretary of Wisconsin Economic Development Corp. (continued from page )FOOD & BEVERAGE Some Kettle Of Fish RAS Aquaculture promises seafood for a hungry world. It also invites public scrutiny. Already the largest producer of America’s favorite fi sh, Maine’s annual output of million pounds of salmon could more than triple in the coming years, if two land-based aquaculture ventures now in the works deliver what they promise. Norway’s Nordic Aquafarms and Maine-based Whole Oceans, expect one day to account for more than % of the domestic U.S. salmon supply. e aquaculture projects represent a combined half- billion dollars in capital investment in two nearby towns on Penobscot Bay, about miles ( km.) northeast of Portland. Belfast and Bucksport, miles ( km.) apart and largely abandoned by heavy industry, fi nd themselves at the leading edge of a food technology that could provide huge amounts of protein, sustainably, to a hungry planet. “We really do think that this is transformative not only for the region, not only for the state, but just in the way we feed people,” says Peter DelGreco, president and CEO of Maine & Company, a privately funded statewide economic development organization. DelGreco adds that the advanced RAS (recirculating aquaculture systems) technology underpinning both projects will produce healthy salmon that, unlike those raised in ocean pens, will not have been exposed to mercury, plastics or antibiotics. Indoor farming could preserve wild fi sh. It could reduce the industry’s carbon S I T E S E L E C T I O N JULY 2019 61 by G ARY DAUGHTERS gar y.daug hter s @ site s ele c tion.c om62 JULY 2019 SI T E S E L E C T IO N footprint by blunting imports, now 90% of America’s salmon supply. What’s not to love? Quite a lot, say opponents in one of the two towns. Big Ambitions Nordic Aquafarms, headquartered in Fredrikstad, Norway, announced plans last year to spend up to $500 million in the coastal Maine town of Belfast to build a three-tank indoor salmon farm three times the size of an Olympic pool. By investment, it’s Maine’s biggest private project in memory. At full production, Nordic expects to raise 66 million pounds of salmon a year. With a projected 100 full-time workers, Nordic would become one of the top 10 employers in Belfast. Marianne Naess, commercial director for Nordic Farms, Inc. says the company already raises salmon using RAS technology at an indoor location in Fredrikstad and at another in Denmark. RAS-raised salmon can go from eggs to mature product in two years, about half the time required for pen-raised salmon. “This is high-quality fish,” says Naess. “They exercise 24/7 in the tank and develop great firmness and texture. No medications, no antibiotics, no GMO.” Nordic looked to the U.S. because it wanted to get closer to its customers. Naess says plentiful water supplies were crucial to site selection. “We need access to clean seawater and clean freshwater,” says Naess. “So, we have to be close to the ocean, and it has to be free of pollution. It has to be a constructable site of sufficient size and access. And we have to be in a place where we can recruit people. That brought us to Maine. There’s a great fishing tradition here, and Maine is a great brand in the seafood world.” While Nordic plans to build its facility from the ground up, on a site across a road from Penobscot Bay, Whole Oceans was drawn to a structure already standing: Bucksport’s former Verso (Previous Page) Photo: Getty Images S I T E S E L E C T I O N JULY 2019 63 paper mill, which closed in 2014 with the loss of 570 jobs. Jennifer Fortier, outreach and development associate at Whole Oceans, Inc., says the company’s plans include expanding into other locations that, combined, could produce up to 50 million pounds of salmon a year, with 20 million pounds coming from Bucksport. “Our goal over the next 15 to 20 years,” Fortier tells Site Selection, “is 10% of the U.S. market. It’s not just all at the Bucksport site. We would consider other sites in the region whether it’s Maine or somewhere else, as well as the West Coast.” One of the Bucksport site’s key benefits is its pre-existing water intake system, which spares Whole Oceans hefty construction costs, and, importantly, permitting issues. Whole Oceans says it can draw up to 72 million gallons of brackish water a day from the Penobscot River and 18 million gallons of freshwater from a nearby lake. The Bucksport site, not insignificantly, was passed over by Nordic. In May, Whole Oceans completed its purchase of the former Verso property. The company hopes to break ground later this year. “It’s amazing what can be achieved when the community, local business and government collaborate toward common goals,” Jason Mitchell, president of Whole Oceans, said. “Advances in permitting, site diligence, design and construction planning really highlight the opportunity that this project delivers.” A Rocky Reception For Nordic Aquafarms in Belfast, things have not proceeded as smoothly. Facing unexpected opposition, the project is well behind schedule and potentially in doubt. Now hoping to break ground in 2020, Nordic has had to hunker down on the defensive. “We’ve put so much investment and effort into it that I don’t thinks it’s time to give up right now,” says Naess. “But, you know, I certainly wish some of the dialogue had been different.” The first hint of trouble came in April 2018, when several dozen citizens turned up for a 5-0 city council vote in favor of Nordic’s request to re-zone its selected property for industrial use. The locals came with questions about the size of the project, the technology and the effects on Penobscot Bay. At increasingly tense, New England-style town hall meetings, opposition appeared to gel as questions became more pointed: What about water and energy usage, waste and smell? What about traffic, chemicals, jobs and aesthetics? Naess says 90% of Belfast supports the Nordic project. Three city council candidates, all of whom ran to block the farm, were defeated in November. But opponents have proved to be persistent, well-funded and social media savvy. They’ve gummed up the permitting process, including repeatedly challenging Nordic’s application to pipe fish waste into Penobscot Bay. A lawsuit alleging that the city cut corners in re-zoning the Nordic site has cost Belfast tens of thousands of dollars. “I had expected some opposition, but not this much,” Thomas Kittredge, Belfast economic development director, tells Site Selection. “I certainly didn’t expect us to get sued. ” Kittredge notes that the site of the former Verso mill in Bucksport was zoned industrial already, and people are long accustomed to seeing it. The Nordic site, by contrast, sits on greenspace owned by the Belfast Water District that some residents treat as parkland. “It’s going to look different than it currently does,” he says. Elizabeth Ransom is principal, senior project manager and senior geologist for Ransom Consulting Engineers and Scientists, which aided Nordic in the site selection process. Her team was engaged by Nordic in spring 2017 after the company had narrowed its search from both U.S. coasts to the East Coast stretching from Virginia to Canada. Ransom says the team looked at “thousands” of sites before eventually narrowing in on Maine. Among a dozen or so potential sites there, Nordic officials briefly considered the former Verso Mill in Bucksport, where Whole Oceans is off to a far smoother start. “At the time,” says Ransom, “their feeling was that it wasn’t matching some of their site needs. We kind of did a drive-by, but it wasn’t something that was walked around.” People close to the project say that, had Nordic selected property that was privately owned, the process might have gotten off the ground more smoothly. With the Water District being a quasi-public entity, the deal was subject to public scrutiny from the beginning. “The moment you start saying I want to negotiate a potential purchase and sale agreement, you are in the public element,” says Ransom. “You may not have completed all your studies, and yet the public is involved because there’s a review process. You’re having to engage with the public, who very much want to know what your plans are, before you necessarily have that defined.” Next >