(Reuters) - Matt Arnold just spent $5,000 to run help-wanted ads for his company’s five trailer factories scattered from Pennsylvania to Utah.
And yet high jobless rates have not translated into workers flocking to open positions on assembly lines.
On Friday, the Labor Department said 916,000 jobs were created last month, the most since last August, including 53,000 manufacturing positions.
The report’s manufacturing diffusion index, a measure of the breadth of hiring across some 75 goods-producing industries, registered one of its highest readings ever.
Manufacturing employment suffered a much less severe blow than service sector jobs last spring when COVID-19 first brought the economy effectively to a standstill.
About one of every 10 factory jobs were eliminated in the shutdowns versus roughly one of every six service jobs.
One small printing plant just closed near him, and the owner called to ask if he wanted to buy machinery. »