Morristown ranked 6th best place to work in manufacturing

December 23, 2019 – The city of Morristown has been recognized for its place in the manufacturing world. According to SmartAsset, a personal finance technology company headquartered in New York, Morristown is the sixth-best place to work in manufacturing in the nation, following Elkhart-Goshen, Indiana, Greenville, North Carolina, Elizabethtown/Fort Knox, Kentucky, Spartanburg, South Carolina and Jonesboro, Arkansas.

“It doesn’t surprise me,” said Keith Andrews, 2019 chairman of the Morristown Area Chamber of Commerce. “We who live and work here know how successful our city is, but not everyone knows what we make and do on a daily basis.”

Rounding out the top 10 are Greenville/Anderson/Mauldin, South Carolina, Athens/Clarke County, Georgia, Rockford, Illinois and Lima, Ohio.

“We think Morristown is at the center of industrial growth,” Morristown Mayor Gary Chesney said. “We’re not surprised Morristown is ahead of others.”

“Wherever we’re ranked, it’s great to be considered and recognized with what we do well,” said Bill Brittain, Hamblen County mayor. “(Being honored) shows how the people of this area have been working hard.”

From 2014 to 2017, the number of manufacturing jobs in Morristown increased by 12.7%, the 56th-highest rate for this metric across all 376 metro area in the study, according to SmartAsset. That growth contribues to the fact Morristown has the second-largest percentage of its workforce employed by the manufacturing industry of any area in the tope 10, following only behind the No. 1 metro area, Elkhart-Goshen. In 2017, more that 12,000 residents in the Morristown metro area worked in manufacturing, equaling almost a third of its total workforce.

Andrews believes the high ranking comes from the cooperation among industry, city and county governments and the educational community in the Lakeway Area. “One of the things that is most important is the collaboration of city and county governments, and our school systems,” Said Andrews, who is also vice president of product development at Tuff Torq in Morristown. He said it is the relationship between TCAT-Morristown, Walters State Community College and Hamblen County Schools that has helped create the workforce leading to the city’s high ranking.

The full report of rankings can be found at smartasset.com/mortgage/best-places-to-work-in-manufacturing-2019.

Source: Citizen Tribune

Morristown Area Chamber of Commerce * 825 W. First North Street * P.O. Box 9 * Morristown, TN 37815 * 423-586-6382 * 423-586-6576 fax