November 15, 2007

San Antonio Express-News
Manufacturing in San Antonio Brings in $14.4 Billion

By Sean M. Wood

Even though they don't make trucks, jeans or widgets in Bexar County, Valero, Tesoro and CPS Energy helped contribute to the $14.4 billion local manufacturing economy in 2006, according to a study commissioned by the Greater San Antonio Chamber of Commerce.

Manufacturing was big in San Antonio even before Toyota started building trucks in late 2006, according to researchers Richard Butler and Mary Stefl of Trinity University. The arrival of Toyota, however, has turned a spotlight on a sector that quietly has generated billions and employed thousands for more than a decade.

"You'd be a little bit surprised to learn we had a sleeping giant here in San Antonio," County Judge Nelson Wolff said.

Manufacturing generated $10 billion back in 1996. More than 52,000 people were employed in manufacturing jobs, and they got paid $2.2 billion in 2006. The average wage of a manufacturing-sector worker in 2006 was $41,496, 13 percent higher than the average wage in San Antonio.

Stefl and Butler relied on data from the Texas Workforce Commission and the North American Industry Classification System in identifying workers in manufacturing.

Some are surprising. Receptionists, janitors and executives at Valero Energy Corp. and Tesoro Corp. are counted as manufacturing jobs because refining is considered to be manufacturing.

Employees of city-owned CPS Energy also are considered to be in manufacturing because power generation is manufacturing, according to the manufacturing economic impact study committee and the National Association of Manufacturing.

"These are manufacturing jobs just like a receptionist in a doctor's office is a health-care worker," said Stefl, chairwoman of the department of health care information at Trinity.

She and Butler, former chairman of the economics department at Trinity, have conducted similar studies on health care and aerospace. Both were surprised by what they found when they looked at manufacturing.

"Most people thought we had no manufacturing except Levi's, and Levi's is gone," Butler said.

The study helped confirm what members of the local manufacturing community have believed about their industry, said John Dewey, president of ITM Partners Ltd. and chairman of the San Antonio Manufacturers Association.

"We had some thoughts manufacturing was important," Dewey said. "We were surprised how big it was."

Dewey said the information will allow the group to push for a skilled labor force, something Wolff, Butler and Stefl all said was lacking."