Cabinet-level office focus: Manufacturing

WASHINGTON, Dec. 12 (UPI) -- A new Office of Manufacturing Policy will help the United States revitalize manufacturing and gain a competitive advantage, President Barack Obama said Monday.

"At this make-or-break time for the middle class and our economy, we need a strong manufacturing sector that will put Americans back to work making products stamped with three proud words -- Made in America," Obama said in a statement.

The new office will be led jointly by Commerce Department Secretary John Bryson -- giving the position Cabinet-level influence for the first time -- and National Economic Council Director Gene Sperling, the White House said.

The office will hold Cabinet-level meetings "to aggressively implement the administration's priority manufacturing initiatives," the White House said.

The office expands on Obama- and Bush-administration appointments of White House advisers on manufacturing, known informally as "manufacturing czars." Obama's appointment, Ron Bloom, resigned in August.

U.S. manufacturing production has grown 14 percent since 2009 while real goods exports have grown 29 percent. Over this same period, U.S. manufacturing has added more than 300,000 jobs.

Still, Washington's non-profit Council on Competitiveness issued an 88-page report last week saying U.S. "policy prescriptions for manufacturing are in disarray."

And separately, nearly two-thirds of 170 manufacturing companies at a State University of New York conference Friday said in a survey they were hiring -- but more than a third said they could rarely find qualified applicants.

"We have unconscionably high unemployment in this country," Michael Molnar, chief manufacturing officer of the Commerce Department's National Institute of Standards and Technology, told the attendees of the conference in New Paltz, N.Y.

"And yet, it surprises people that U.S. employers are having trouble hiring skilled workers."