Texas Products, Manufacturing and the World Series

I read an interesting article this morning (Oct 28 pre-game) from the Texas Department of Agriculture titled ‘Without Agriculture There Would be No World Series’.  This title peaked my interest since I was up late watching the Rangers and Cardinals.  I am of course a Ranger’s fan since I live in Arlington Texas.  Not so much a Cowboy’s fan, but that is an altogether different ball game and team.

Reading this article was very interesting; it lists all the raw materials that Texas produces including wood for bats, peanuts, pork for hot dogs, etc.  However, I am curious about what top products Texas actually manufactures since we work with so many process manufacturers at CIS.  I took a few minutes and found some data that is not too surprising based on the years I have been working with manufacturers. 

We may produce a lot of wood, but our top industry for manufacturing employment is petroleum refining along with oil and gas machinery.    These two industries employed over 70,000 people in the state of Texas for 2010.     In addition, we do look good with Mary Kay as the second largest chemical employer in Texas!  We are not all about oil and gas.  Top export market is Mexico and China, which means that all of our manufacturing jobs are not outsourced.

I was surprised to see that electronics manufacturing took the top spot.  However, upon further research it made sense.  National Instruments was just listed as number 18 among the top 25 multinational companies to work for and they are based in Austin.   Semiconductors and computers also are in the top 10, with potato chips and snacks close behind.  I know we have a large Frito Lay plant down the road and there are at least four or five more plants in the DFW area.

 According to the Texas Workforce Commission in 2010 there were 1,553 food manufacturing firms employing 88,563 folks. This is an increase of almost 1B from 2009.   Again, Mexico, Canada, and then China are the top export countries.     

I found the data for this article on the US Census website, the State of Texas website and the Texas Workforce Commission.  None of the results are perfect!

I am about to head out and get ready for the game tonight.  By the time this is published, we will have a new World Champion and my hopes are on the Texas Rangers!

By Nancy Phillippi with Custom Information Services (CIS), Microsoft Dynamics GP Partner based out of North Texas and a Rangers fan.  Your feedback and comments are welcome.  Contact Nancy at nphillippi@customis.com or by phone at 817-640-0016 x 109.