From the APP:
NJ manufacturing doing better than you think, making these things you’d never imagine
Each month, Unex Manufacturing Inc. executives get a phone call or email from an economic development group in another state — Florida, Texas, South Carolina, Michigan, Indiana, Ohio — asking if they are ready to move out of New Jersey to a cheaper location.
A move would no doubt help Unex lower its taxes and labor costs and keep up with its competitors. But after 60 years in New Jersey, the executives have stood their ground. They are staying.
“We have a good group of people here,” said Howard McIlvanie, vice president of operations and one of the company’s owners. “If we picked up and moved, we might lose a majority of them, and I don’t think we’d want to do that.”
New Jersey’s manufacturing industry, written off not long ago as a relic, is staging a modest comeback. New companies, aided by advances in technology, are starting from their homes. Policymakers are devoting more resources to manufacturers and training programs. And companies in the state have more job openings than they can fill.
A return to the state’s manufacturing heyday seems unlikely. New Jersey remains expensive and has recently lost high-profile manufacturers.
But New Jersey government and industry officials aren’t conceding defeat, noting that the state’s biggest economic development selling points — an educated work force and location in the heart of the Northeast — are coming in handy for “advanced” manufacturing firms that require high-tech skills.
New Jersey’s manufacturing sector has increased from 241,300 jobs in December 2013 to 255,000 jobs in December 2023, stemming what was a decades-long decline.
“Not declaring victory, but we’d characterize that as a good start,” Tim Sullivan, chief executive officer of the New Jersey Economic Development Authority (EDA), said last week at a Freehold Township conference sponsored by New Jersey Manufacturing Extension Program, an industry trade group.