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The Pittsburgh region's pool of manufacturing jobs shrunk steadily in the 10 years before the recession began in December 2007, but the area has lost significantly more — about 11,600 — of its industrial jobs in less than two years, state figures show.

"This loss is significant for the region," said Sabina Deitrick, co-director of the Urban and Regional Analysis Program at the University of Pittsburgh's Center for Social and Urban Research.

Those manufacturing jobs tend to be linked to high productivity and support advanced technology and positions such as computer programmers and engineers, Deitrick said.

The seven-county region had 88,400 manufacturing jobs in August, down from 100,000 in December 2007, the beginning of the recession. That's a decline of about 12 percent.

Most of the region's major manufacturers have trimmed payrolls to cut costs or bring employment in line with lower production, or both. Alcoa Inc., Allegheny Technologies Inc., AK Steel Corp., ArcelorMittal Holdings, Consol Energy Inc., Kennametal Inc., Nova Chemicals Corp., Sony Corp. and U.S. Steel Corp., are among the manufacturers with slimmer payrolls.

Just a decade ago, 11.4 percent, or 128,600 of the 1.126 million jobs in the region — Allegheny, Armstrong, Beaver, Butler, Fayette, Washington and Westmoreland counties — were in manufacturing, according to the state's Center for Workforce Information and Analysis.

Despite the shrinking manufacturing base, the sector remains important to the economy, pumping money and prestige into the region, experts say.

"It is still the biggest contributor of any (occupational ) sector in the region. It's not just the wages, it's the benefit levels," said Harold D. Miller, president of Future Strategies LLC., a Downtown consulting firm. "The higher the wages, the more they support other industries," Miller added.

The average manufacturing worker in the state earned $991 a week last year, according to the state's Center for Workforce Information and Analysis. By comparison, the average worker in the Pittsburgh region earned $735 a week, according to a U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics report in 2008.

"They (manufacturing jobs) have a tremendous spinoff effect ... a tremendous amount of economic benefit. A plant (factory) has a way of supporting a town — the workers making a product and their money going into the community," said Frank Gamrat, an economist and senior researcher for the Allegheny Institute for Public Policy, a think tank in Castle Shannon.

"There's also a source of pride that goes along with manufacturing. We like being known as the Steel City," Gamrat said.

Each of those good-paying manufacturing jobs provided direct or indirect support to four or five other jobs, through services provided and wages spent elsewhere in the economy, said Scott N. Paul, executive director of the American Alliance for Manufacturing, a Washington, D.C.-based partnership of manufacturers and the United Steelworkers union in Pittsburgh.

Those layoffs are not limited to the large multinational corporations.

Smaller manufacturers have been forced to lay off workers, reduce full-time jobs to part-time work or require weeklong voluntary layoffs. They are trying to manage short-term cash flow problems with the need to keep qualified workers, said Thomas Henschke, acting president of the SMC Business Councils in Churchill, which represents about 5,000 small manufacturers and other businesses.

A New Kensington manufacturer is hoping to reverse the trend of cutting manufacturing jobs.

"I expect to almost double my work force" of 55 employees, said Arthur Skelley, chief executive of Cannon Boiler Works Inc. of New Kensington, which builds fuel conservation units for boilers and has a service business.

The key to Cannon Boiler's expansion is the push by the government and private sector for energy conservation.

"I've diversified the company to have products as recession proof as possible," said Skelley, who has grown the size of his company from about five workers 37 years ago to the current level. It has about $10 million in annual sales in the United States and foreign countries.

"Our business is essentially focused on energy and energy conservation," Skelley said.

To prepare for growth, Skelley acquired a building in nearby Allegheny Township and plans to expand there, keeping the New Kensington site as well.

The good news for manufacturers is that the recession appears to have bottomed out, said David Heuther, chief economist for the National Association of Manufacturers, a trade group representing the nation's largest manufacturers.

With the federal stimulus package "we will be looking at $40 million worth of business that we will capture over the next four years," Skelley said.

Laid-off manufacturing workers such as Joseph M. Solominsky of Greensburg want an expansion to happen soon.

Solominsky lost his job in April at Holtec Manufacturing Division, a Turtle Creek plant that makes condensers and feed water heaters for power plants.

Solominsky, 35, said he sent 40 resumes and tried for several months to land a manufacturing job as a millwright, welder or in coal mining, "but they (companies) just weren't hiring."

"It's frustrating. It's been horrible finding a match (for my skills). I want to work in heavy industry 'cause that's where the money is," Solominsky said.

Having struck out at landing a manufacturing job, Solominsky is taking culinary courses at Westmoreland County Community College in Youngwood, to become a chef. He is training at Marty's Capital Grille in downtown Greensburg.

"It's not going to pay as much as a steel mill job," Solominsky said, but chefs are needed.

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