The Industrial Heartland from 1969 to the Present
You may know this area by another name: the factory belt, the manufacturing belt, or, more memorably, the rust belt. However, the industrial Midwest and adjoining areas couldn’t be the rust belt without first having had a high proportion of manufacturing assets. Over many decades, this area we’re calling “the industrial heartland” was a highly productive region with a sustained economic interest in manufacturing. Long before the rust set in, entrepreneurs with capital and a desire to invest in US manufacturing sectors—primary and fabricated metals, electrical equipment, petroleum and coal products, and meat packing among them—invested their funds and set up their companies in this region.

The industrial heartland spans, from east to west, upstate New York, western Pennsylvania, and Ohio, and then it continues up the shores of Lake Michigan into Michigan and Illinois before brushing the southeastern edges of Wisconsin. This region has been and, in many cases, continues to be reliant on manufacturing for its economic vitality. The landscape helps tell the story: Plumes of steam dissipating overhead, barges laden with coal or grain or oil chugging up river, steel ladders clinging to building exteriors, these reflections of the industrial heartland exist in the area’s yesterday and in its today, and they will likely exist into the foreseeable future.
In many ways, the Fourth Federal Reserve District, which comprises Ohio, western Pennsylvania, eastern Kentucky, and the northern panhandle of West Virginia and is served by the Cleveland Fed, reflects the manufacturing history of the region. Several of the traditional employment sectors in the Fourth District, as in the industrial heartland overall, are manufacturing based and profit from the demographic and natural resources the area offers. In recent years, Fourth District employment has diversified beyond these sectors into healthcare, higher education, service-based trades, and others, yet the District’s employment share in manufacturing still exceeds that of the nation overall. What was true in 1969 remains true now: Manufacturing is a significant aspect of the industrial heartland and of the Fourth District’s economy.

The Cleveland Fed’s Mark Schweitzer elaborates on the economic performance over the past half-century of the industrial heartland. Read the Q&A.
The Cleveland Fed has produced many resources on the industrial heartland, manufacturing, and related topics. Here, you’ll find Rust and Renewal, three retrospectives on the Cleveland Fed’s largest metropolitan statistical areas, or MSAs, Cleveland, Cincinnati, and Pittsburgh. Each retrospective provides an overview of the MSA’s progress and struggles from 1969 to the present. You’ll also find links to related content, including “What’s Gone Wrong (and Right) in the Industrial Heartland?” “Manufacturing Employment Losses and the Economic Performance of the Industrial Heartland,” and Annual Report 1986: Common Bonds, Divergent Paths: An Economic Perspective of Four Cities.
And don’t miss the Q&A with Mark Schweitzer, a senior vice president in the Cleveland Fed’s Research Department and author of many of the pieces linked in these pages.
Recent Articles
-
Labor Market Tightness across the United States since the Great Recession
Though labor market statistics are often reported and discussed at the national level, conditions can vary quite a bit across individual states. We explore differences in these labor market conditions across US states before and after the Great Recession using a ratio of the number of unemployed workers to job vacancies. We show that the intensity of the adverse effects of the recession and the strength of the recovery varied geographically at all points in the process. We also demonstrate that wage growth is delayed until the ratio of unemployed workers to job vacancies returns to prerecession levels. Read More
-
The State of States’ Unemployment in the Fourth District
Unemployment rates vary across individual US states and respond to business-cycle fluctuations differently. Using a framework that enables us to calculate the normal unemployment rate for states in the Fourth District and compare that rate to the national normal rate, we conclude that these individual states and the District as a whole have very little labor market slack. Read More
-
Is a Neighborhood’s Unemployment Rate Influenced by its Metro Area?
Employment conditions vary widely within metropolitan statistical areas (MSAs). Even if a metro area experiences rising average levels of employment and income, the changes in specific neighborhoods in that metro area may be well above or below that average. We looked at unemployment and income data by neighborhood in the 100 largest MSAs in the US to identify factors that help explain the differences observed across neighborhoods. Read More
-
Annual Report 1986: Common Bonds, Divergent Paths: An Economic Perspective of Four Cities
Our 1986 annual report examines the economies of the four largest cities in the Fourth Federal Reserve District - Cincinnati, Cleveland, Columbus, and Pittsburgh. Read More