Manufacturing is usually prized by most communities. Generally, it delivers jobs that pay at least average and has historically been a large employing sector. Depending on location, manufacturing can lead to strong ripple (multiplier) effects throughout a local economy that are larger than most sectors.

The state of Washington agrees. In 2021, the state Legislature passed a bill to double the number of manufacturing jobs over a decade.

By that measure, manufacturing in the greater Tri-Cities has outperformed over the past decade (2022 vs. 2013).

Total manufacturing employment in Benton County grew by 650, or 16%, and by 750 (23%) in Franklin County. In the combined two counties, the gain amounted to 19%.

This experience was relatively rare. Statewide, manufacturing employment shrunk by 6% over the same decade. Eastern Washington generally fared better.

In Spokane County, where manufacturing has been the fifth largest sector, its employment grew by 8%. In Yakima County, where manufacturing has been the fifth largest sector, its workforce grew by 2%. And in Grant County, where manufacturing has been the third largest sector, its workforce shrank by 4% over the past decade, but not as much as statewide.

Mid-pack

Despite the strong growth over the past decade, manufacturing still doesn’t land in the top five sectors by employment in the greater Tri-Cities. In 2022, its average headcount placed it ninth. The 2023 results will be out the end of June 2024.

This middle-of-the-pack ranking is, to a large degree, a credit to the diversification of the local economy, and in particular, to the unique presence of a national laboratory, plus the massive cleanup efforts at Hanford.

As I’ve written in the column before, Tri-Cities manufacturing is dominated by food processing. For the most recent year, two-thirds of the Benton County and more than three quarters of the Franklin County manufacturing workforce were in food or beverage manufacturing.

No other major metro area in Eastern Washington reveals this level of dependence on agricultural processing. Grant County comes the closest, at 53%.

The third-largest manufacturing industry in the two counties consists of chemical manufacturing, The likely two largest contributors to chemical manufacturing products are nuclear fuel fabrication and fertilizer production.

Not surprisingly, the growth of Tri-Cities manufacturing over the past decade has been a story of food and beverage expansion. These two industries accounted for 86% of all additional manufacturing jobs between 2013-22. In other words, agricultural processing has become even more important to the manufacturing base.

Manufacturing wages

And local manufacturing pay? In Benton County, the manufacturing average annual wage was equal to the average for all sectors, at about $64,400 in 2022. In Franklin County, average annual earnings in manufacturing were slightly (about $2,000) higher than wages overall. But at about $52,000, average annual earnings in manufacturing were much lower than jobs west of the Columbia River.

This increasing tilt toward food and beverage production carries implications for both the manufacturing sector and the overall economy.

The larger of the two industries, food manufacturing, currently (2022) pays nearly $58,700 and $52,400, in Benton and Franklin counties, respectively.

This strongly influences the ranking of manufacturing, which places ninth by average earnings among the 20 sectors in both counties.  

Benton County manufacturing lies several thousand dollars below the overall county average; in contrast, Franklin County manufacturing comes in slightly higher than the county overall average.

In other words, food processing is relatively more important to increasing average personal earnings, and therefore personal income, in Franklin than Benton counties.

Beverage production is nearly non-existent in Franklin County, but not in Benton County, where the average size of the workforce in 2022 was nearly 1,500.

Pay for beverage production workers, however, is much lower than for food processing: about $47,0009 in Benton County and $32,000 in Franklin County. Consequently, if value added agriculture is to increase its contribution to the overall economy of the greater Tri-Cities, it will likely come more from food processing.

Over the past decade, annual earnings of workers in the food industry here have climbed by 32%, or about 3% per year. This rate was a bit lower than the earnings growth rate of the entire workforce, which was about 35% over the same interval.

Food processing will dominate

Where will the profile of Tri-Cities manufacturing be by the end of the decade? Unless trends reverse, food processing will continue to dominate the sector, perhaps even more than today. Beverage production will be important for Benton County, unless wine consumption slumps significantly.

Whether job growth in both industries can continue its strong pace in a labor-constrained economy remains to be seen. It seems unlikely in an economy as robust as the one here that the growth in manufacturing workforce earnings will outpace the overall average. But earnings growth that keeps up with overall growth in Benton County and that continues to outpace growth in Franklin County isn’t too bad an outcome.

D. Patrick Jones is the executive director for Eastern Washington University’s Institute for Public Policy & Economic Analysis. Benton-Franklin Trends, the institute’s project, uses local, state and federal data to measure the local economic, educational and civic life of Benton and Franklin counties.