These are perilous times for smaller U.S. manufacturers as low-skill production jumps to foreign shores and demand for high-tech labor rises faster than supply. But new foundation partnerships with government and business are ratcheting up the workforce. When Pittsburgh’s foundations support programs that give workers the skills they need for manufacturing jobs, that’s classic philanthropy. But increasingly, funders are linking many such programs to a much broader strategy aimed at large-scale economic development. That’s especially true in southwestern Pennsylvania, where the longstanding economic drivers—government and private industry—often don’t have the resources to re-tool traditional employment sectors into efficient competitors in a modern, global economy. The numbers show dramatically why foundations and other regional leadership groups are focusing on manufacturing and why the stakes are so critical: Of some 1.2 million total jobs here, manufacturing employs 169,276 people, the biggest single private-sector employment group after healthcare, according to the most recent figures (2001) from the SMC Business Councils, an advocacy group of small manufacturers. It’s the sector with the biggest payroll: $7.1 billion in 3,950 companies, says Karen Campbell, SMC vice president and director of people management resources. And it’s the sector with the highest average wage, $42,000, compared with the $28,000 average of other sectors. Of the four major sub-clusters in this region’s manufacturing sector, metalworking is the largest: 1,632 plants with a $3.39 billion payroll and more than 63,000 employees, accounting for 41 percent of manufacturing jobs. Other major sub-clusters are vehicle manufacturing, $1.6 billion; chemicals and rubber, including plastics, $1 billion; and communication, electronic/computers, $1.1 billion. “For every metalworking job, there’s another one and a half jobs created in the support sector,” says Barry Maciak, executive director of Duquesne University’s Institute for Economic Transformation. “For every metalworking job you lose, you lose one and a half additional jobs.” To
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