Can New England’s diminished manufacturing sector see growth again

That leveling off was "a win for the economy," said Lily Fitzgerald, the director of the Center for Advanced Manufacturing in Massachusetts. She added it's also proof lower costs aren't everything.

Being close to customers, suppliers, and regulators has major advantages, she said. You can work things out face-to-face or more easily assess a manufacturer's labor or environmental standards.

That proximity also means avoiding a lot of regulatory and logistical complexity in an age of tariffs and multinational supply chains.

Meanwhile, New England's concentration of top colleges and high-tech know-how are a unique draw, Fitzgerald said.

"It's really hard to compete with the Massachusetts innovation ecosystem, frankly," she said.

Expensive energy, older workers, fewer high school seniors

Unfortunately, New England is also known for things that don't help manufacturers. The six New England states are all in the nation's top 11 for most expensive industrial electricity rates, according to the U.S. Energy Information Administration.

New England also has the third-highest labor costs per hour (at $54.08) of the nine regional U.S. Census divisions, according to U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics.

This expensive workforce is also older, with more people approaching retirement. The three northern New England states are the oldest in the country, with Maine (median age, 44.9) just ahead of Vermont (44.4) and New Hampshire (44.1).

Tony Fernandez, the president and CEO of the New Hampshire Manufacturing Extension Partnership, said he sees the region's age when he meets with local manufacturers.

"I'm in my 70s. A lot of what you see in manufacturing are people who look like me," Fernandez said. "I'm the young guy in some of these meetings."

He added that's also partly because companies are paying premium wages to retain workers past traditional retirement age because there's no one to replace them. That's related to the region's problems at the other end of the age spectrum.

The New England states claim six of the country's seven lowest fertility rates (births per 1,000 females ages 15-44), with Vermont's 41.7 rate the lowest.

John Lewis is executive director of the Manufacturers Association of Maine, the state with the fifth-lowest fertility rate at 46.3. He said there aren't enough Maine high school graduates to meet manufacturing's workforce demands. This spring, Maine graduated about 11,600 public high school seniors, and the state hasn't cracked 14,000 graduates since 2010.

"That's nowhere near enough," Lewis said of the 2026 number. "If everybody went into manufacturing, it's nowhere near enough."

"Survival, baby"

With demographic trends so tough, manufacturers like Connecticut's Chris Jewell have decided there's only one thing to do: Whatever it takes. Jewell is CEO of Collins & Jewell Company, a firm in Bozrah that his grandfather co-founded in 1946.

Collins & Jewell started out servicing boilers in "old mills that are now condos," Jewell said. When their customers began moving south, the company's main business became helping them relocate. And after Asia and Mexico became prime destinations for domestic wire and cable manufacturers, Collins & Jewell switched to moving them outside the U.S.

Then, Collins & Jewell pivoted again. Today, it's a specialty manufacturer that builds things that help Electric Boat build its submarines, such as the extensive staging it uses when it "butts" its submarine hulls together.

Jewell said the company's radical shifts in focus are about one thing: "Survival, baby."

"We understand that we've got to adjust with the times," he said.