Houston may be the fourth-most populous city in the United States, but it ranks first when it comes to the number of manufacturing jobs within its city limits. That's the word from Manufacturers News Inc., a compiler and publisher of industrial directories, which generated the list as of year-end 2010.
The Texas city takes the top spot with 228,226 manufacturing jobs, nearly 90,000 more than the second-place finisher, New York, with 139,127 jobs. The data reflect only jobs within city limits and does not include either suburbs or exurbs.
Five of the top 50 cities are in California (Los Angeles, San Diego, San Jose, Irvine and Santa Clara), while four are located in Texas. Among notable changes cited by Manufacturers News since it last compiled the list in 2008: Detroit fell to 45th place from 29th, and Seattle moved up to 34th from 46th place. The publisher also noted that the top 10 cities lost a total of 95,805 manufacturing jobs, or 8.4%, since August 2008.
The top 10 industrial cities, including the number of manufacturing jobs, are:
| 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 | Houston New York Chicago Los Angeles St. Louis Dallas Cincinnati Indianapolis Phoenix San Diego | 228,226 139,127 108,692 83,719 83,123 81,626 81,364 79,566 77,322 70,709 |
