Volkswagen workers build Passats at the Chattanooga manufacturing plant.JOB FAIRSTo hire additional workers for expanding businesses in the area, job fairs are scheduled:• Today from 9 a.m. to 3 p.m. at the Lafayette Housing Authority, 300 South Oak St., to recruit applicants for more than 100 job openings by Express Employment for VW suppliers and other employers. The fair is sponsored by the Georgia Department of Labor’s Lafayette Career Center, which has more information at 706-638-5525• Thursday from 9 a.m. to 3 p.m. at Brainerd Crossroads, 401 Austin St., in Chattanooga. Sponsored by the Tennessee Career Center, the Southeast Tennessee Development District and the Chattanooga Area Chamber of Commerce, the spring fair attracted more than 49 employers and more than 1,500 applicants last year.
BY THE NUMBERS31,200 – Number of manufacturing jobs in metro Chattanooga in March, or 13.3 percent of all nonfarm jobs.16,000 – Number of manufacturing jobs lost in metropolitan Chattanooga from 2000 to 2010, nearly 36 percent of all factory jobs.3,500 – Number of manufacturing jobs added in the past two years in metro Chattanooga, growing factory jobs nearly 13 percent.Source: U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics, Brookings Institution Metropolitan Policy Program
Coming out of the worst recession in a half century, the Sunbelt has lost some of its manufacturing shine to the Midwest’s Rustbelt, according to a new study of manufacturing trends among metropolitan cities.
But Chattanooga remains a bright spot for more manufacturing employment, adding factory jobs in the past two years at the fastest pace of any MidSouth metro area. In the most recent two years for which employment data is available, metro Chattanooga added 3,500 manufacturing jobs for a nearly 13 percent gain in factory jobs.
Chattanooga’s growth rate since the recession ended has been more than twice the pace of manufacturing job gains in Nashville and Atlanta and more than four times the growth rate in other traditionally strong manufacturing cities of the South, including Birmingham, Memphis and Louisville.