From SCDigest's On-Target E-Magazine
- Jan. 20, 2014 -
Supply Chain News: Number of Women on the Factory Floor Continues to Decline
Percent of Women on Shop Floor Falls to Levels not Seen Since 1971
SCDigest Editorial Staff
Perhaps somewhat oddly, the number of women in US manufacturing is on the decline.
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The Wall Street Journal reports that at a new oven plant in Memphis, the US. unit of Sweden's Electrolux AB says 46% of the more than 500 employees are women. |
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What Do You Say?
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With the post-recession recovery being reasonably strong in manufacturing, the number of men working on the shop floor has risen about 7% since 2010, while the number of women in similar positions is down .3% over the same period.
Since February 2010, the US manufacturing industry, which appeared to be in a terminal decline for more than 30 years, has added more than 554,000 jobs to the workforce, according to the Joint Economic Committee of the US Congress.
However, in that same time frame, men have gained 565,000 jobs in the sector and women lost 11,000 jobs, lowering female representation in the sector to 27%, the lowest it's been since 1971, according to the Joint Economic Committee's "Manufacturing Jobs for the Future" report, released in late December.
Around 1990, the share of women in production jobs rose to about 32.5%, before starting a more than 20-year decline that shows no signs of stopping, as shown in the graphic below from the Congressional report. That is at odds with the growing share of women in other employment areas. Women currently account for about 49% of all non-farm jobs in the US, up from 47% in 1990.
So, what's going on? A 2013 report produced by Sen. Amy Kobuchar's (D-Minn) said that many women are still of the opinion that the manufacturing industry is primarily a male-dominated one and that entry for them is limited because of the physical requirements involved.
'The long-standing stigma that jobs in manufacturing require difficult physical labor and are only for men no longer holds true," the report noted. "Advances in technology have changed the way goods are produced, and many manufacturing jobs now require highly specialized technical skills and little physical labor."
Percent of Women in Production Jobs Continues to Decline
Source: US Congressional Report "Manufacturing Jobs for the Future"
(Manufacturing Article Continued Below)
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It could be the manufacturing work simply isn't attractive to many women, and they are able to find work in other fields, as indicated by the overall rise in women among all jobs and the fact that the unemployment rate for women remains about a half of a percent lower for women than men. In mid-2009, in the deepest part of the recession, the figures were about 10% for men and 7.6% for women, ironically probably because at that point huge numbers of manufacturing jobs were being lost that hit men more so than women.