Since the end of the recession, one of the indexes that we watch closely for the hot shot trucking sector specifically and the economy, in general, is the growth of manufacturing within the United States. Improvements in the manufacturing, construction and retail sectors each help growth in the demand for urgent freight and hot shot services.
The most recent analysis shows that manufacturing continues to grow/recover at a healthy rate overall and one of the leading states in percentage growth according to a new study from Montana State University’s Montana Manufacturing Extension Center is, you guessed it, Montana.
Since 2009 employment within the manufacturing sector has grown at 3.6 percent nationally while in Montana the growth has been a very encouraging 8.6 percent. In Montana, other than miscellaneous manufacturing, the three largest industries in terms of the total number of manufacturing companies in Montana are: fabricated metal products (482), food products (360) and wood products (344).
We thought it would be an interesting time to see which states lead the way in terms of total manufacturing jobs added in recent years by combining a number of recent reports to form an aggregate. Please note that this list represents new jobs added since the start of 2010, not total jobs in manufacturing in each state.
1. Michigan
2. Texas
3. Indiana
4. Ohio
5. Wisconsin
6. Washington
7. Illinois
8. Kentucky
9. Tennessee
10. Iowa
Also interesting to note is that new manufacturing jobs created in the top four states combined outnumber those created in states ranked five through twenty. As the economy and manufacturing has gathered pace so has the demand for hot shot trucking services in many of the states outlined above.
