Data from the various agencies are combined in four broad categories that users can select:

• People—county demographic profiles, including age, race/ethnicity, education, family composition, population change, migration, and immigration.
• Jobs—conditions and trends affecting the labor force, such as employment change, unemployment, industry, and occupational structure.
• Agriculture—indicators of farm structure and the well-being of farm households, including farm size, income, sales, and tenure.
• County typologies—ERS county classifications based on the rural-urban continuum, economic structure, and other key locational features, such as, landscape amenities, occupation types, persistent poverty, or population loss status.

For more information visit – http://www.ers.usda.gov/data/ruralatlas/

This won’t come close to making up for the nearly six million lost since 1997, but manufacturing should be at least a modest contributor to total U.S. employment in the next couple of years, these economists say.

“(Manufacturing is) the shining star of this recovery,” says Thomas Runiewicz, an economist at IHS. He expects total U.S. manufacturing jobs this year to rise to about 12 million.

Mark Zandi, chief economist at Moody’s Analytics, agrees stating “Manufacturing is going to be a significant source of job growth over the next decade.” Zandi says U.S. manufacturers today are now very competitive, with much lower labor costs and debt burdens, and now can afford to expand. He expects manufacturing job growth to average about 2% a year through 2015.

Hoping to further stimulate investment and job growth Congress approve a new tax break in December allowing companies to deduct from taxable income 100% of certain types of investments in 2011.

Despite the upbeat forecasts, some experts are predicting that job growth may remain modest because many companies are finding ways to increase production through greater efficiency and automation, without adding many workers. Conrad Winkler, a vice president at the consulting firm Booz & Co. who focuses on manufacturing, says manufacturers are being very cautious in their hiring, partly to avoid the risk of having to lay off people later on.

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For more information, please check out this article from the Wall Street Journal.

The excellent environment in commodity crop production has carried over into the food processing industry and related industries, such as logistics firms that move the products. As such, many communities across the nation with historical strengths in ag and food activities are now seeing increased expansions of food processing operations, as well as new projects.

“The last few years food processing has taken off considerably, with additional employment and companies investing new capital,” says Mike Van Mill, president and CEO, Economic Development Alliance of Kankakee County, Ill, where 90 percent of the county’s land mass is involved in agricultural uses and 40 percent of the county’s manufacturing base comes from food-processing.

Van Mill says Kankakee County’s access to feedstocks and processors create a strong supply chain and that companies are currently looking to develop new or expand manufacturing facilities that are closer to their supply chains.

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For more information, please check out this article from the Business Expansion Journal.

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