HOLLIDAYSBURG, pa. — Don’t tell Michael McLanahan that manufacturing in the United States is dead. His family-owned, privately held company has made mineral-processing and farm equipment since its founding way back in 1835 — and is enjoying a boom.
“It was our best year ever,” McLanahan said during a tour of the busy factory in central Pennsylvania that illustrates why manufacturing is growing twice as fast as the broader economy.
McLanahan, 73, is the fifth generation of his family to run the capital-intensive company. It builds equipment to help mining companies separate product from waste, the dairy industry to remove manure from sand, and the energy sector to segregate gravel from silica sand used in fracking — the process of drilling through shale deposits thousands of feet below ground to reach natural gas.
McLanahan Corp. boomed even as the U.S. economy struggled to gain momentum in 2011 and the global economy was panicked and fearful that Europe’s debt problems would drag everyone down.
Other data also signal a nationwide manufacturing rebound. December orders for durable goods — big-ticket items such as cars, refrigerators and industrial equipment — rose by a better-than-expected 3 percent. That was on top of November’s upward revision to a 4.7 percent increase.
It’s good news for a sector that accounts for about 12 percent of the U.S. economy but lost more than 6 million jobs over the past decade.
Not everyone buys the trend.
“I think it feels better than it is. The data itself looks to be very seriously flawed, and although dead-cat bounce is too strong a term, there is a kernel of truth in it,” said Alan Tonelson, a research fellow at the U.S. Business and Industry Council, which represents smaller U.S. manufacturers who do not operate abroad.
Tonelson points to a widening deficit in manufactured goods, noting that even as exports grow, ground is being lost to foreign competitors.
