By Dave Dahl

SPRINGFIELD – “Manufacturing Matters” is the name of a tour the Illinois Manufacturers’ Association is on to promote a new study which shows things are better than many people believe.

IMA’s president and CEO, Mark Denzler, said, “Education workforce is probably the Number One challenge that manufacturers face. Before the covid pandemic, the state’s unemployment rate was about three percent. Today it’s just slightly over that.

“Nearly every manufacturer has a Help Wanted sign,” Denzler said Wednesday at the tour’s kickoff in Decatur, “trying to attract (workers); whether it’s young men and women coming out of high school, dislocated workers, returning veterans; we have to get them into jobs. We have to better showcase what manufacturing is. I don’t think manufacturers pat ourselves on the back enough to show what we do.”

The study’s author, Joseph Von Nessen, a research economist at the Darla Moore School of Business at the University of South Carolina, talked about the “household spending multiplier.”

“That’s on all sorts of industries from food to entertainment to housing to health care,” he said. “All industries are supported across the board, so when these workers are hired, they are earning high wages, and they are spending them locally in the economy.”

You can see the report here.

Dave Dahl can be reached at [email protected]