Manufacturing holds a special place in American history, but for the past few decades, this sector has been on the decline. Since 1997, more than 91,000 manufacturing plants have closed and almost five million manufacturing jobs have been lost.
There are, however, jobs to be had and careers to be built in America’s manufacturing industry, provided you are looking in the right places.
In its sixth annual study, SmartAsset in a release, revealed the best metro areas for manufacturing workers to work and live. They analyzed data on manufacturing jobs as a percent of the total workforce, employment growth, income growth and home affordability. This year, they also considered a timely metric to account for the impact of COVID-19: the October 2020 unemployment rate.
Decatur placed 4th on the list, behind Hinesville Georgia, Lafayette-West Lafayette Indiana and St. Joseph Missouri.
The survey reports: “Decatur, Illinois, in the central part of the Land of Lincoln, saw income for manufacturing jobs increase by 33.08% between 2015 and 2018, the fourth-highest increase in the study for this metric. The one-year increase in manufacturing job income between 2017 and 2018 was 12.88%, the 10th-highest bump in the study. Decatur is also a fairly affordable place to live, as housing costs represent just 10.81% of income on average, the fifth-lowest rate for this metric across all 378 metro areas in the study.”
For a look at the full survey click HERE
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