"Manufacturing matters in Michigan and the United States," Granholm said. “We’re not just creating products, we’re building lives. Manufacturing jobs are largely responsible for creating the middle class across the country, providing opportunities for millions of families nationwide to participate in the American Dream.”
Granholm offered a three-step plan for elevating the national discourse on maintaining manufacturing jobs in the United States:
Gather Michigan’s manufacturing industry leaders to explore issues and solutions in a state-level meeting in the next several months;
encourage the governors of the nation’s other top manufacturing states to hold similar meetings in their states;
encourage those governors to gather in Washington to discuss state and federal actions needed to sustain the nation’s manufacturing industry.
After a decade of steady losses, U.S. manufacturing took a precipitous nosedive with the loss of more than 2 million jobs in 2001-2002. Michigan lost more than 100,000 manufacturing jobs in the same two-year period.
“We simply cannot allow our manufacturing nucleus to erode as it has so dramatically done in the past several years,” she said.
Executives Optimistic on Economy
U.S. executives are more optimistic about prospects for the economy during the next year, according to a quarterly survey by PricewaterhouseCoopers LLP. Sixty-three percent of executives said they were either very optimistic or somewhat optimistic about the economy. The survey was taken during the second quarter.
Still, less than half (41 percent) of the executives surveyed said they planned “major” new investments during the next year, compared with 37 percent during the first quarter. Only 35 percent are planning to add workers, down from 37 percent from the first quarter.
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