Bizav manufacturing jobs continue to move south

Eighteen years ago, Presidential candidate Ross Perot referred to “a giant sucking sound” of U.S. jobs moving south to Mexico. According to union officials in Wichita, “the air capital of the world,” that sucking sound is as real today as it was in 1992, and Mexico appears to remain the destination of choice.

The movement of manufacturing jobs from the U.S. began in earnest in the 1980s when the automobile industry began looking for ways to reduce costs and “discovered” Mexico. More recently, Mexico has discovered the aerospace industry and worked at luring jobs south.

By 2006, the Mexican government had agreed to a zero-percent import duty on aerospace components and in 2007 signed a bilateral aviation safety agreement. The move allows aerospace companies in Mexico to certify aerospace designs and components in compliance with FAA regulatory standards.

Mexican universities soon detected the market shift, and today local universities in five of the country’s aerospace manufacturing centers are developing programs to train students for jobs in that sector. Just last year the National Aeronautic University, which opened in Querétaro in 2007, broke ground for a new campus.

Some Mexican students are even coming north. Twenty students from Mexico are now enrolled in New Mexico State University’s aerospace program in Las Cruces. Whether they will stay in the U.S. to work in the aerospace industry or return to Mexico remains to be seen.

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