On the large scale, Biden regained all factory jobs lost during the pandemic, and more than 146,000 more people work in U.S. manufacturing than five years ago. However, key swing states are still hurting from the closing down of manufacturing factories.
In Wisconsin, Michigan, and Pennsylvania, 39,000 manufacturing jobs have been lost in the past five years. Manufacturing levels in these states haven’t recovered since 2019.
Most of those jobs have gone to China, Mexico, and states in the South and West.
Loss of factories has been detrimental to communities like Milwaukee, which shuttered its 85-year-old Master Lock Co. factory last week. Just a decade ago, that factory’s workers would bring home $100,000 a year.
The factory resided in 30th Street Industrial Corridor, a strip consisting of factories that drew in thousands of black families, which consist of 38.6% of the population. Currently, the unemployment rate of Milwaukee’s black population is 9.3%.
“Milwaukee remains the most deeply distressed city in the country for African Americans,” Marc Levine, a University of Wisconsin at Milwaukee economic development expert told Bloomberg.
The inability of manufacturing jobs to recover could have ill-fated consequences for Biden come November; in 2020, Wisconsin was decided by only 20,682 votes.
Levine said that 80% to 90% of factory jobs in the metro area were once in the city, but now, the city’s share has fallen to less than a quarter.
However, in December, the Biden administration announced that 30th Street Industrial Corridor is a finalist for a $50 million federal grant to rehabilitate old factory sites and create new apprenticeships.
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“This kind of factory closure is exactly the reason President Biden is investing in communities that have been hollowed out by Congressional Republicans’ trickle-down economics,” White House spokesman Michael Kikukawa said in a statement to Bloomberg. The $50 million grant that Milwaukee is a finalist for would create “good-paying jobs and economic opportunity,” he said. “This manufacturing boom is disproportionately benefiting communities that have too often been left behind — like Milwaukee’s 30th Street Corridor.”
Prior to the pandemic, 43,000 jobs were lost under former President Donald Trump – with 20,000 of them in Michigan, Pennsylvania and Wisconsin.
