Manufacturing counties, compared with all nonmetro counties, are likely to be more densely populated, urbanized, and adjacent to a metro area.
Manufacturing-dependent counties constituted the second most numerous of the economic types, trailing the farming group only slightly. (The manufacturing counties were the most numerous of the county types in the 1986 typology update.) The numerical prominence of manufacturing counties reflects a long-term trend of the emergence of manufacturing in nonmetro economies to replace farming as the primary economic activity.
The 506 manufacturing counties represented 22 percent of nonmetro counties and had 31 percent of nonmetro population and 2.3 million (55 percent) nonmetro manufacturing jobs. During 1987-89, average earnings from manufacturing ranged from 30 to 50 percent of total earnings in about 85 percent of the manufacturing counties. Manufacturing accounted for 50 to 82 percent of total earnings in the other 15 percent.
Sixty-one percent of manufacturing counties are concentrated in the Southeast. The North Central region of the Midwest accounts for another 29 percent, while the Northeast and West, mainly the northwestern counties, account for only 6 and 4 percent,respectively (fig. 5). Except for those counties in the Midwest, manufacturing counties usually gained population during the 1980's.
A distinctive feature of the manufacturing counties, relative to the other types, is a more urban orientation. Manufacturing counties were more likely to have larger shares of people living in towns of at least 2,500 inhabitants, to be contiguous to metro areas, and/or to be more densely populated. Over 80 percent of the counties had populations living in small and medium-sized towns, and nearly 60 percent of the counties were adjacent to a metro area. The average manufacturing county had a population of 31,162 compared with 22,363 for all-nonmetro counties; persons per square mile averaged 59.2 compared with 36.3 persons per square mile for all-nonmetro counties (table 3). One reason accounting for their population density is the relatively small size of land area in manufacturing counties; the average county consisted of 639 square miles compared with 1,256 square miles for all-nonmetro counties.
The economies of the manufacturing counties improved slightly during the 1980's, mainly because of gains made in the latter part of the decade (fig. 6). The improvement was partially due to gains in the trade/services sector where real earnings increased 15 percent and jobs grew 46 percent during 1979-89. Throughout most of the decade, manufacturing jobs slowly declined, then began to grow after 1987. As a result, manufacturing counties experienced an 1979-89 overall growth of 1.9 percent in manufacturing earnings and 2.8 percent in manufacturing jobs. Manufacturing jobs grew most in totally rural, nonadjacent counties with populations living only in small settlements or in open country areas.
Table 3--Manufacturing-dependent counties:
Selected characteristics
Manu- All-
facturing nonmetro
Item Unit counties Counties
------------------------- --------- -------- --------
Counties Number 506 2,276
Population,1990 Thousands 15,768 50,898
Totally rural,1993(1,2) Percent 82.1 34.0
Population density,1990(3,4) Number 59.2 36.3
Population change,1980-90(4) Percent 1.5 .6
Per capita income,1989(4) Dollars 13,081 13,580
Earnings change,1979-89:(5)
Total earnings Percent 6.0 3.4
Manufacturing earnings do. 1.9 -36.9
(1) No persons living in towns of 2,500 population or more.
(2) Percentage of counties in group.
(3) Persons per square mile.
(4) Unweighted county averages.
(5) Calculated from aggregated data
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