Manufacturing: Continued Growth Is Interrupted by the Pandemic.

• Author: Sonora, Robert
• Position: ASSESSING MONTANA'S KEY INDUSTRIES

Montana manufacturing employment has grown about 1% faster than national output since the Great Recession. Montana manufacturing employment rose 25% to 20,500 workers from in 2010 to 2019. About two-thirds of manufacturing employees are in the durable goods sector. However, since 2015, the fastest growth has been in the nondurable manufacturing sector.

The strong growth in Montana manufacturing employment occurred despite closures in several manufacturing industries, such as the Smurfit-Stone paper mill near Missoula, which permanently closed in early 2010. This facility was the largest manufacturing plant in the state. In addition, there were shutdowns and closures in the wood products industry. Declines in wood product employment began falling in 2000, but since 2010 it has hovered in the 2,600 to 2,700 range.

The recent declines in forest industry employment are a continuation of a long-term trend. Forest industry employment in Montana has decreased by roughly 4,600 jobs or almost 39% since the 1980s. Labor earnings in the forest industry (the amount actually paid to workers) also declined by roughly the same percentage. These declines were relatively modest in the 1980s and 1990s, but have accelerated drastically since 2000.

The rapid growth of manufacturing was accompanied by numerous national and multi-national corporations making acquisitions in Montana during the past decade. Examples include GlaxoSmithKline (Hamilton), Boeing (Helena), Applied Materials (Kalispell) Newport (Bozeman) and FLIR (Bozeman). None of these facilities were started from scratch, but instead were acquired from existing Montana manufacturers. The Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS) reports that there were 1,625 manufacturing establishments with employees in Montana during 2019.

The largest industries within manufacturing were fabricated metal products (215 establishments), food products (152 establishments) and...