Bouncing back after Alcoa and Luminant closures
Now that the holidays are behind us, we are going to explore some facets of Milam County’s labor market and workforce. This can be a thrilling topic once you start to dig into the data. For this topic, we will explore the local civilian labor force size and manufacturing jobs.
The Civilian Labor Force is the number of Milam County residents who are actively in the workforce. They are either working or they are actively seeking work. This number fluctuates from month to month and does not have major swings — unless there’s a pandemic when it swung wildly.
The magic number is 12,000. That was the peak of the Civilian Labor Force in Milam County in 2007 when Alcoa and Luminant were running. After they closed, the Civilian Labor Force dropped to around 9,000. That’s a 25% drop and other bad things start happening to an economy when that many people stop working.
For the past two years, the Milam County Civilian Labor Force number has been above the 10,000 mark. This is encouraging that our local labor force is starting to come back to life.
It’s discouraging to put numbers to this next part, but it’s something that everyone knows. Milam County lost 88% of its manufacturing jobs. At its peak in 2000, Milam County had 1,812 manufacturing jobs. We now have a little over 200. In 2001 and 2002, these folks earned over $230 million in total wages. This number represents millions of dollars that flow into Milam County as our neighbors sell their labor and skills to make goods. The wage per worker figure is lower now, even adjusting for inflation, than when the data starts in 1995. This means that, on average, manufacturing jobs pay less than they did 30 years ago.
Getting quality manufacturing back to Milam County is the primary focus of our efforts as we seek to recover from the Alcoa and Luminant closures.
We will need to create around 1,600 new manufacturing jobs that pay over $160 million in annual payroll. It is doubtful that we will land a single, large employer to get there. But over time, we can get multiple businesses that add up to that amount.
Adding these 1,600 new manufacturing jobs will catapult Milam County’s Civilian Labor Force well over 12,000.
I am confident that we will get there. The new Advanced Manufacturing and Logistics Center at Sandow Lakes will add hundreds of jobs once they get going. Your Rockdale Municipal Development District is working on activating a smaller property as a new industrial park. This also has the potential of creating a few hundred jobs.
Imagine a labor market in Rockdale that is better than when Alcoa was here.
We are going to do great things in Rockdale, Texas!
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