When JD Vance spoke in Radford on Monday, some of his loudest cheers came when he talked about restoring manufacturing jobs.
“For years, Washington insiders in both parties have sold out places like Middletown, Ohio, like Radford, Virginia,” the Republican vice presidential candidate said. “Both parties shipped good manufacturing jobs overseas. They decided we didn’t need to make anything in America again and now we’re way too dependent on the Communist Chinese to make the critical things that we need. … President Trump has a different vision. Let’s make more things in America. Let’s make our own country self-reliant and let’s do it with American workers making good wages.”
Vance is being somewhat simplistic about the reasons many manufacturing jobs have gone away — it’s a little more complicated than saying that “Washington insiders” knowingly shipped them away; technology has played a big role, too — but, broadly speaking, Vance isn’t wrong. Manufacturing jobs have declined (they hit their peak in the U.S. in 1979) and many manufacturing jobs that remain have gone overseas. Both Republicans and Democrats talk about rebuilding American manufacturing by reshoring supply chains, they just do it in different ways, and, politically speaking, Republicans do a better job of talking about it. Vance’s speech in Radford is Exhibit A in that.
Vance’s shout-out to Radford as a place that’s been “sold out” made me curious about what’s happened to manufacturing jobs there. Is it a good case study of the changes in American manufacturing? Conveniently, there are some statistics, not for Radford, but for the New River Valley of which it’s a part. What I found surprised me; will it surprise you, too?
The New River Valley: Manufacturing jobs grow faster under Biden than under Trump
The Federal Reserve has stats from 1990 onwards. They show manufacturing jobs in the New River Valley peaking in July 1999 at 20,300, then hitting bottom in June 2010 (a delayed effect of the Great Recession) at about 11,800. They recovered — somewhat — to 14,300 in July 2015, then slipped again to 13,600 in November 2016 when Trump was elected and 13,300 when he was inaugurated in January 2017. They continued to fall during Trump’s first year in office (although it’s always debatable how much a president can be held responsible for the economy when he first takes over). They rose again to 15,200 in May 2019 and generally held steady (at a slightly lower level) until the pandemic. They stood then at 14,800. By January 2021, when Trump left office and Biden took over, manufacturing jobs in the New River Valley were back to 14,600. The most recent figures, from June, show the New River Valley has 17,700 manufacturing jobs.
The job losses during the shutdown shouldn’t be held against Trump — those weren’t the result of his economic policies — so let’s go with the figure before the pandemic hit. That means under Trump the New River Valley saw a net growth of 1,500 manufacturing jobs while under Biden the New River Valley has seen 3,100 manufacturing jobs added. However, some of those might have been jobs created under Trump that were idled during the pandemic, so if we want to measure Biden only against Trump’s pre-pandemic levels, that means Biden has overseen a net growth of 2,900 manufacturing jobs in the New River Valley — still more than under Trump.
There are at least three possible explanations for this:
- Trump’s policies set in motion growth that continued under Biden despite the Democrat’s policies.
- Biden’s policies led to faster growth in manufacturing jobs than Trump’s did.
- The economy has reacted without much regard to the policies of either president.
Let’s hold that thought while we consider another: Is the New River Valley an anomaly in that we see more manufacturing growth under Biden than under Trump?
The Federal Reserve publishes such data for each metropolitan statistical area in Virginia, so let’s have a look. First, though, the national context:
U.S.: It depends on how you want to count things, but manufacturing growth has been slow under both Trump and Biden
Manufacturing jobs peaked nationally in May 1979, declined some during the ’80s and ’90s, but then saw their most precipitous collapse from November 2000 to February and March 2010, most of which was during the presidency of George W. Bush, with the tail end of the Great Recession going into the early part of Barack Obama’s first term. Were Bush’s policies to blame? Or was this the after-effect of the North American Free Trade Agreement (signed in 1992) and China joining the World Trade Organization in 2001? How much did technological changes drive the decline of manufacturing, regardless of trade arrangements? Feel free to debate all that. Economists sure do. Certainly all those things played a role to some degree. The important thing for our purposes is that after rebounding from that low point, manufacturing jobs have grown at a slow pace, be it under Obama, under Trump or under Biden, and are nowhere close to what they once were.
For those interested in the math, manufacturing jobs stood at 12,366,000 when Trump took office in January 2017 and at 12,780,000 before the pandemic hit, and were back to 12,188,000 when he left office in January 2021.
Once again, there are several ways to do the math here but let’s do it in a way most favorable to Trump and omit the drop in jobs during the pandemic. That means Trump saw 414,000 manufacturing jobs added while Biden has seen 777,000 added. However, we’re now just 178,000 manufacturing jobs over pre-pandemic levels, so by that measure Trump oversaw more net manufacturing growth than Biden has. Different parties may argue that different ways but, as the chart above shows, big-picture-wise, manufacturing growth has been relatively slow under both administrations.
Virginia: Same thing. Manufacturing growth slow under both administrations.
The Virginia pattern is roughly the same (note that the Virginia chart has a different starting point, date-wise). As with many things, you can argue this two ways. One way is this: Big-picture, the number of manufacturing jobs hasn’t changed all that much under Obama, Trump or Biden. The other way is this: Manufacturing jobs in Virginia have grown faster under Biden than under Trump. The manufacturing workforce in Virginia grew from 231,000 when Trump took office in January 2017 to a peak of 244,100 in July 2019, then slipped to 241,900 just before the pandemic hit. By the time Trump left office, manufacturing jobs were at 235,600; as of June, they’re at 250,300 under Biden.
That means Trump oversaw a net growth of 10,900 manufacturing jobs in Virginia while Biden has presided over 14,700. However, if we measure Biden against Trump’s pre-pandemic levels, then the Biden administration saw 8,400 new manufacturing jobs added in Virginia, a little lower than Trump. Take your pick. Either way, the chart above shows that Virginia’s growth in manufacturing jobs has mirrored national trends and has been relatively slow, while the one for the New River Valley shows faster growth after hitting bottom. That suggests some places in Virginia may not have recovered so well, so let’s take a look at some others.
The Roanoke Valley: More manufacturing growth under Biden than Trump
If we don’t count the pandemic (which seems unfair to me), the Roanoke Valley’s manufacturing jobs hit their low point about a year earlier than the state as a whole, 15,100 in April 2009, then rose to 16,600 in August 2014, then fell again and were at 15,300 when Trump took office in January 2017, peaked at 15,800 in May 2019 and stood at 15,422 when the pandemic hit. Manufacturing jobs were at 15,100 when Trump left office in January 2021 and now stand at 17,000.
That means in the Roanoke Valley (by which the Fed means the Roanoke Metropolitan Statistical Area, from Botetourt County to Franklin County), manufacturing jobs shrank under Trump but grew under Biden. However, if we throw out the January 2021 figure as being too influenced by the pandemic and go with the figure before the pandemic hit, then they grew by 122 under Trump, while under Biden they are now 1,578 above pre-pandemic levels. The Roanoke Valley is roughly similar to the New River Valley in this regard. But other places sure aren’t.
Lynchburg: Manufacturing declined slightly under Trump, and is lower still under Biden
In the Lynchburg MSA, we see a different picture. Like other places, manufacturing jobs declined sharply during the early 2000s, from a high of 26,600 in 1998 to a low of 15,100 coming out of the Great Recession in 2010. However, while other communities have recovered some — but not all — of the manufacturing jobs they lost, Lynchburg hasn’t.
In Lynchburg, manufacturing jobs declined from 15,000 when Trump took office in January 2017 to 14,500 in March 2020 just before the pandemic hit. When Biden took office, they were at 14,300 and now are at 14,400 — which means that the Lynchburg MSA lost 500 manufacturing jobs under Trump, and while 100 have been added under Biden, the region is still 100 manufacturing jobs below pre-pandemic levels.
I certainly wouldn’t advise Democrats to go to Lynchburg to claim credit for the economy — but neither would I advise Republicans to claim that Trump turned things around there. Neither party really has.
Big picture: Lynchburg has slowly lost manufacturing jobs even after the Great Recession, no matter who has sat in the White House or what policies they’ve pursued, which raises the question of how much any president matters at the ground level. Perhaps other factors are a play? We’ll come back to that.
Bristol: Slow manufacturing growth under both Trump and Biden
This chart is for the entire Bristol-Kingsport-Johnson City MSA, so we can’t attribute all these numbers to the Virginia side. In any case, the Bristol MSA saw manufacturing start declining before other places did. It hit a high of 38,400 in June 1995, then started dropping until hitting 20,600 in January 2010. Manufacturing jobs rebounded, briefly, to 22,600 in December 2011 under Obama, but then fell again and have stayed relatively flat since then. When Trump took office, manufacturing jobs in the Bristol region stood at 20,600 and were at 20,900 just before the pandemic hit. When Biden took office, manufacturing jobs were at 19,500 and are now at 21,100. That means the Bristol MSA added 300 manufacturing jobs under Trump. Under Biden, it’s added 1,600 but is just 200 above Trump’s pre-pandemic level. Overall the manufacturing base has stayed relatively flat.
Danville: Incomplete data
Unfortunately, the Fed stopped producing this data for Danville in 2014, when it was downgraded from Metropolitan Statistical Area to a Micropolitan Statistical Area. That’s also why we don’t have data for Martinsville or the Alleghany Highlands and so forth. In other words, they’re too small. That’s too bad, because all those communities have seen manufacturing losses.
The Fed did produce such figures for Danville up until the end of 2014, so we can see a peak of 16,900 manufacturing jobs in February 1990, which fell to 6,100 in October 2006, then rebounded some — but the stats stop at the end of 2014, when there were 6,600. For the purposes of measuring whose administration saw faster manufacturing job growth here, Trump or Biden, the Fed can’t help us.
Instead, we’ll have to look at a few other MSAs in Virginia.
Richmond: Slow manufacturing growth under both Trump and Biden
The Richmond MSA looks a lot like Lynchburg. From a peak of 60,100 in March 1990, manufacturing jobs slowly declined through the ’90s until a sharp decline in the early 2000s. The bottom was February 2012 at 30,230 manufacturing jobs — meaning the capital region lost about half its manufacturing jobs over the span of two decades. Since then, manufacturing growth has been sluggish. Manufacturing jobs stood at 31,500 when Trump took office, peaked at 32,216 in November 2019 and stood at 31,800 when the pandemic hit. When he left office, manufacturing jobs in the Richmond MSA were at 30,324 and are now at 32,229. That means the Richmond MSA added 300 jobs under Trump before the pandemic. Under Biden, it added 1,905 but only 429 above pre-pandemic levels.
Despite that, the Richmond area is now the fastest-growing population center in the state — primarily because the economy is growing in ways other than manufacturing.
By contrast, three other metro areas in the state do show manufacturing growth.
Hampton Roads: Manufacturing jobs grew faster under Trump
Hampton Roads saw manufacturing jobs peak at 65,400 in 2000, fall to 51,900 in 2010 and 2011, rise slightly, then fall again to 51,800 in 2016. Under Trump, manufacturing jobs in Hampton Roads rose from 52,000 in January 2017 to 59,000 when the pandemic hit. When Biden took office in 2021, manufacturing jobs were at 57,800 and now are at 58,600. That means under Trump, Hampton Roads added 7,000 manufacturing jobs, while under Biden it added just 800 — yet remains 400 under the pre-pandemic level.
That makes Hampton Roads a place where manufacturing jobs rose during both administrations — but grew faster under Trump than under Biden.
Northern Virginia: Either a tie or an edge for Trump, depending on how you do the math
We don’t think of Northern Virginia as a big manufacturing center but, yes, manufacturing jobs are there. They peaked at 34,900 in June and August 2000, then fell to 23,600 in February 2010. By the time Trump took office in January 2017, manufacturing jobs in Northern Virginia were back up to 25,600, and rose to 27,300 in November 2019 and were at 27,100 when the pandemic hit. When Trump left office, they were at 26,500, and now are at 28,000.
The math: The region added 1,500 manufacturing jobs under Trump, pre-pandemic. Under Biden, it’s added 1,500, but the region is only 900 manufacturing jobs above pre-pandemic levels. So should Biden get credit for pulling us out of that pandemic drop, in which case manufacturing growth under Biden matched that under Trump? Or should he only get credit for jobs above pre-pandemic levels, which means Trump saw more manufacturing jobs created in Northern Virginia?
Staunton-Waynesboro: More manufacturing jobs created under Trump than Biden, but it’s close
The peak in manufacturing jobs for the Staunton-Waynesboro MSA came at 14,700 in May 1990, then fell to 9,000 in October 2012. Under Trump, manufacturing jobs rose from 9,900 in January 2017 to 11,056 pre-pandemic. Manufacturing jobs stood at 10,900 in January 2021 when Biden took office and are now at 12,000. That means 1,156 jobs were added under Trump pre-pandemic. Under Biden, 1,100 manufacturing jobs have been added, with 944 of those being above pre-pandemic level. The bottom line: It’s almost a tie, but Trump has a slight edge.
Charlottesville: Slightly more manufacturing jobs added under Biden than under Trump
Manufacturing jobs in the Charlottesville MSA peaked at 7,719 in June 1996 and eventually fell to 3,226 in April 2012. Since then, there’s been a slow but steady rise. When Trump took office, there were 3,826 manufacturing jobs in the Charlottesville MSA. They peaked at 4,110 in March 2020, just when the pandemic hit. They were back to 4,056 when Biden took office and now stand at 4,452. If we discount the pandemic, that means 230 manufacturing jobs were added under Trump and 396 under Biden, with 342 of those being above pre-pandemic level. If this were being scored like a boxing match, that would be a slight technical advantage to Biden, but hardly a knockout.
Winchester: Slightly more manufacturing jobs created under Biden than under Trump
The Winchester MSA saw manufacturing jobs peak at 14,960 in January 2000, then fall to 9,331 in February 2010. There was only a little manufacturing job growth under Obama until the very last year of his presidency, but more under Trump and Biden. Under Trump, manufacturing jobs went from 10,245 in January 2017 to 10,742 in January 2021, making this one of the rare places where the economy had not just recovered but added manufacturing jobs even as the pandemic was still going on. Under Biden, manufacturing jobs have grown to 11,331 — so that’s 497 under Trump and 589 under Biden.
The bottom line
The figures just look at the total number of manufacturing jobs, not the type or what they pay. What we see is that no community has come anywhere close to matching the number of manufacturing jobs it once had — the nature of the economy has changed too much for that. That raises a question neither Democrats nor Republicans want to address: Just how much growth in manufacturing jobs is possible? Vance rightly wants to see growth in “good-paying” manufacturing jobs, but employers are under economic pressures to automate whatever they can. Robots don’t call in sick, robots don’t unionize, and robots might be cheaper in the long run — and the customers buying whatever is being manufactured want prices as low as possible. Why should we think a second Trump administration would create more growth in manufacturing growth than his first did? Why should we think a Harris administration would create more such growth than Biden’s did?
To the extent that we have had some growth in the number of manufacturing jobs, we see that growth has varied pretty dramatically from place to place — with much faster job growth under Biden in the Roanoke and New River Valleys, to more manufacturing job growth under Trump in Hampton Roads, to manufacturing job declines under both men in Lynchburg. Here’s yet another way to measure things: Hampton Roads today has 88.6% of the manufacturing jobs it once had. In the New River Valley, the figure is is 87.1%. In Staunton-Waynesboro, it’s 80.9%. In the Roanoke Valley, 67.0%. In Bristol, 54.9%. In Lynchburg, 53.7%. In Richmond, 53.6%.
What accounts for these differences? The nature of the industries matter. The military ship-building in Hampton Roads wasn’t likely to migrate overseas the way shoe-making in Lynchburg was, or textiles in Danville and Martinsville. Other places have also bounced back better than others. Certainly presidential policies matter, but so do lots of other facts on the ground beyond the control of any president. Lynchburg suffers from the lack of an interstate highway (you can blame President John Kennedy for that; his administration routed Interstate 64 through Charlottesville instead of Lynchburg). Meanwhile, the New River Valley benefits from the presence of Virginia Tech, which turns out lots of engineers who have helped fuel growth in the growing number of engineering-driven “deep tech” companies in the region. If I were to credit one president or another for manufacturing job growth in the New River Valley (as well as the Roanoke Valley), the one I’d credit most is Tim Sands — the president of Virginia Tech.
Coming Friday: Something interesting I spotted at the Vance rally
I write a weekly political newsletter, West of the Capital, that goes out every Friday. In this week’s edition, I’ll examine something unusual at the JD Vance rally in Radford. Hint: It’s in the photo above.
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