So, exactly how much economic impact does the supply chain have in the United States? Well, the answer is—we don’t really know all that precisely. Every year, the Council of Supply Chain Management Professionals (CSCMP) publishes its Annual State of Logistics Report. And the most recent edition says the cost of U.S. business logistics is 8.3 percent of U.S. GDP, or about $1.45 trillion.
While that’s the number typically used, there isn’t much more available insight into answering the question. Fortunately, a major step toward developing specific economic impact metrics for the supply chain has been made by Dana Magliola, Lindsay Schilleman and John Elliott.
They are business graduate students at North Carolina State University. And after some intense number crunching, they have definitively identified the economic impact of supply chain for their state in a new report, Understanding the Economic Impact of North Carolina’s Supply Chain: Conduit for Prosperity and Economic Development.
Just as important, they have developed a methodology to determine the economic impact of supply chain for other states, regions, cities— even the entire country. MHI sponsored their report at NC State’s Poole School of Management’s Supply Chain Resource Cooperative.
According to the report, more than 479,800 people work in the supply chain in North Carolina. That’s 12 percent of the state’s workforce. The supply chain has an indirect and induced impact on an additional 770,000 jobs. Combined, that means supply chain directly or indirectly impacts 31 percent of the North Carolina workforce.
By Gary Forger