One company is planning to cut more than 1,000 Atlanta manufacturing jobs.

Rheem Manufacturing Company has announced it will shut down its 650,000-square-foot plant in Milledgeville, Ga., a move that will eliminate 1,200 Atlanta jobs. The company is closing the facility as part of a consolidation effort between operations in Arkansas and Mexico, according to an article by the Atlanta Business Chronicle.

“This is a very difficult decision for us, and we understand it will have a tremendous impact on our employees, their families and the Milledgeville community,” Chief Operating Officer Chris Peel said in the article. “Unfortunately, the precipitous drop in new construction and the global economic crisis show no signs of short-term recovery, a situation which has forced us to take this difficult course of action.”

In 2006, Rheem relocated its headquarters from New York to Atlanta. However, since 2005, the heating and cooling industry has dropped by 40 percent.

The city’s manufacturing industry has felt the effects of that drop. The Atlanta-Sandy Springs-Marietta area’s manufacturing industry employed 160,200 workers during December 2008, according to the United States Department of Labor Bureau of Labor Statistics. This is down from 161,900 workers during November 2008 and an 8.7 percent decrease from last year.

As a whole, Atlanta’s unemployment rate increased from 6.9 percent to 7.6 percent during December. The area had a total non-farm employment of 2,412,600 workers during December, down from 2,421,700 workers during November 2008 and a 3.3 percent decrease from last year.

This entry was posted on Thursday, March 5th, 2009 at 10:51 am and is filed under jobs, Manufacturing. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.