LAKEWOOD – Each month, Unex Manufacturing Inc. executives get a phone call or email from an economic development group in another state — Florida, Texas, South Carolina, Michigan, Indiana, Ohio — asking if they are ready to move out of New Jersey to a cheaper location.
A move would no doubt help Unex lower its taxes and labor costs and keep up with its competitors. But after 60 years in New Jersey, the executives have stood their ground. They are staying.
“We have a good group of people here,” said Howard McIlvaine, vice president of operations and one of the company’s owners. “If we picked up and moved, we might lose a majority of them, and I don’t think we’d want to do that.”
New Jersey’s manufacturing industry, written off not long ago as a relic, is staging a modest comeback. New companies, aided by advances in technology, are starting from their homes. Policymakers are devoting more resources to manufacturers and training programs. And companies in the state have more job openings than they can fill…
New Jersey over the years has been home to companies like Singer Sewing Machine, Western Electric Co., Johnson & Johnson, RCA, Nestle, General Motors and Ford, becoming a manufacturing powerhouse that around 1970 employed 860,000 people and accounted for a third of all jobs, Rutgers University economist James W. Hughes said.
But technology made some of the products made in New Jersey obsolete. And industrial companies moved to less-expensive locations in the south and overseas. In 2013, the manufacturing sector employed about 240,000 people and accounted for about 6% of all jobs, according to state figures.
“It’s really been a long-term slide,” Hughes said. “We are one of the most expensive places to live, one of the most expensive places of doing business, and we have a highly unionized labor force, so we have to overcome all those costs to be successful.”