The Penn State Workforce Education and Development Inititaive released a report by Rose Baker and David Passmore, Forecast of Employment and Job Openings in Pennsylvania Plastics Manufacturing, 2004-2007. In brief, concluded in the report is that,

Between 2004 and 2017, Pennsylvania is forecast to lose employment and experience declining numbers of job openings in occupations in its plastics manufacturing industry as a result of manufacturing productivity increases and in spite of enjoying advantages relative to the entire US in delivered prices and in costs of production (except fuel). The industry is driven by net exports and by business–to–business sales. Disruptions of the export position of Pennsylvania plastics manufacturing or in increasing competition in Pennsylvania markets for Pennsylvania–manufactured plastics products would further degrade industry and occupational employment in the Pennsylvania plastics manufacturing industry.

Provided in the report is background about global competitive pressures faced by the Pennsylvania Plastics Industry and attempts to strengthen Pennsylvania plastics manufacturing through the Pennsylvania Plastics Initiative. A structural model of the Pennsylvania economy, a Pennsylvania REMI Policy Insight Model, was applied to document and forecast the performance and competitiveness of Pennsylvania plastics manufacturing. Then, forecasts of numbers employed and job openings (created by economic change and the need to replace plastics workers who die, retire, or otherwise leave occupations) were produced from the economic model from historical data in 2004 and from forecasts for 2007, 2010, 2012, and 2017.

Some highlights of the forecast:

• All occupations are forecasted to have declining employment due to economic change in the Pennsylvania economy and its plastics manufacturing industry. In particular, Pennsylvania manufacturing is shedding jobs in large part due to large increases in productivity that are occurring.
• Production workers represent approximately one of every three workers in the Pennsylvania plastics industry in 2004 and over the forecast period from 2007 through 2017.
• Production workers are likely to experience the largest decline of numbers employed between 2004 and 2017 (-1,620 workers) and as an annual average for 2004, 2007, 2010, 2012, and 2017 (-322 workers).
• At the same time, production workers have the highest average total separations (1,443) and net separations (241). US Bureau of Labor Statistics standards for forecast reporting would indicate that there are zero job openings for production workers in Pennsylvania plastics manufacturing because net separations do not offset job losses due to economic change. Using this reporting criterion, almost none of the occupations represented in the Pennsylvania plastics manufacturing industry would be reported with other than zero forecasted job opportunities. Exceptions to this trend include operations specialties managers, business operations specialists, buyers and purchasing production supervisors, assemblers and fabricators, and engineers, but the numbers of opportunities forecasted are few.
• Switchboard operators could lose the highest percentage of employment between 2004 and 2017 (-34.6%), but this percentage represents a loss of 5 jobs. This figure demonstrates the need for caution in interpreting job forecast figures in the report because the magnitudes of percentages of employment declines depend on the number employed in the base year of the forecast.

This occupational forecast report was funded by a grant awarded under the President’s High Growth Job Training Initiative as implemented by the U.S. Department of Labor’s Employment & Training Administration.  The information contained in this report was created by the Penn State Workforce Education and Development Initiative and does not necessarily reflect the official position of the U.S. Department of Labor. All references to non-governmental companies or organizations, their services, products, or resources are offered for informational purposes and should not be construed as an endorsement by the Department of Labor.  This report is copyrighted by Penn State and is intended for individual organizational, non-commercial use only.