U.S. manufacturers are the most optimistic they've been in a long time on prospects for future profits and more than half expect to adds jobs this year, an industry group said on Thursday.
"This is the most optimistic manufacturing survey we've seen in some time," said Jerry Jasinowski, president of the National Association of Manufacturers. "They expect profits to rise by 14 percent and plan to increase capital spending by 9 percent this year."
The industry group surveyed manufacturers about their expectations for 2004 at its semi-annual board of directors meeting last week. Top executives from 76 small, medium and large manufacturers responded.
They pegged U.S. economic growth at 4 percent in 2004, compared with 3 percent in the last survey six months ago.
"A solid majority (55 percent) expect to increase hiring this year and another third expect to keep employment at the same level," Jasinowski said. "Only about 16 percent expect to reduce employment in 2004."
The survey shows the U.S. manufacturing sector, which has lost close to 3 million jobs over the past three years, is now in the midst of a "full-fledged recovery," he said.
Manufacturers could soon add as many as 25,000 new jobs a month, for a total this year in the range of 250,000, Jasinowski said.
The survey also found that political concern about the outsourcing of U.S. jobs to lower-wage countries like China and India "has been dramatically overstated," Jasinowski said.
"There's no evidence to suggest that large amounts of manufacturing unemployment that we've seen over the past three years is due primarily to foreign outsourcing," he said.
Two-thirds of the companies responding said they had not increased outsourcing over the past three years. Of those that did, the survey found half of the jobs went to domestic suppliers, he said.
Jasinowski estimated that perhaps 5 percent to 10 percent of U.S. manufacturing job losses in the past three years were due to jobs moving overseas.
A host of factors — such as high health care and energy costs, frivolous lawsuits and government regulations — which make it more expensive to produce goods in the United States, played more of role in the job losses, he said.
