One of the reasons I think our community college friends are big on advanced manufacturing is that they think small cities and even rural areas are, or could, benefit. Not so.
1.Advanced manufacturing growth in big cities.
"Nearly seven times the manufacturing GDP growth in urban American than rural America since 2000. This is unsurprising, since that is where the new workers manufacturing firms need are located," says Michael Hicks, the professor of economics at Ball State University who published his findings in February of 2018.
2.Advanced Manufacturing in just 10 cities.
"Since 2001, 60% of all manufacturing GDP growth has occurred in just 10 cities, the smallest of which is about 2.2 million people. More than one in four metropolitan areas actually lost manufacturing GDP during this period," he says.
Hicks concludes:
"The simple truth is that US manufacturing is doing extremely well and is enjoying record levels of production. At the same time, the places factories are located and the people who work in them have gone through epic change. The big winners in this transformation are college graduates with technical degrees located in large urban places. This trend will continue for the remainder of the 21st Century."
But wait, someone disagrees with Hicks. That's interesting too. Hang on.
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