By BRENT MARTIN
St. Joseph Post
If you want to work in manufacturing, St. Joseph is the top spot to land.
That, according to SmartAsset which named St. Joseph number one out of 378 metro areas analyzed nationwide.
St. Joseph Chamber of Commerce President Patt Lilly says, ironically, the coronavirus pandemic helped raised St. Joseph’s profile when many of its manufacturers were declared essential and kept producing while the rest of the country shut down.
“COVID has brought forward too, I think, a realization that there’s opportunity in these rural areas of the country, whether it be St. Joseph, northwest Missouri, or many other areas around the country. These are areas that I think site selectors and companies are beginning to take note of,” Lilly tells St. Joseph Post.
SmartAsset says St. Joseph’s low unemployment rate, its job growth, and its wage growth led to its top ranking. Nearly a quarter of the St. Joseph workforce is employed in manufacturing.
Lilly credits trade for the strength of St. Joseph manufacturing.
“We are a very strong export market here,” Lilly says. “In other words, we export a fair amount of product that comes out of St. Joseph. We’re the third leading exporter as a community in this state. That obviously tells you there’s a lot of manufactured goods being done here.”
In Missouri, only the major metropolitan areas of St. Louis and Kansas City export more goods than St. Joseph.
Jobs in St. Joseph grew by 8.3% over the past year with income growing 5.6%.
Lilly says the chamber can use the ranking by SmartAsset to lure businesses here, but also to fill the jobs already here.
“We’ll use it for talent attraction, attracting people to the community that have the skills,” Lilly says. “The truth is that the manufacturers here can’t find enough people to take the jobs that are here.”