Intel has announced a massive investment in US manufacturing and in the state of Ohio.

Chip giant Intel plans to officially announce Friday that it will invest $20 billion to build two computer chip plants in Jersey Township in Licking County in what will be Ohio’s largest economic development project to date. State and local officials are set to gather in Newark this afternoon to celebrate the news.

The factories, called fabs, will employ 3,000 workers at an average salary of $135,000 per year. On top of that, the project is expected to create 7,000 construction jobs and 10,000 indirect jobs. And that’s just the start.

This is big news in so many ways. First, it’s a big step in bringing semiconductor manufacturing back to the United States. This is welcome news for the long-term health of U.S. manufacturing, but also due to the current chip shortage being experienced in many industries.

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With Apple’s announcement that it will start manufacturing high end sapphire glass in Arizona, we have some good news on the domestic job front. The impact will be 2,000 jobs, though it’s important to note that 1,300 of those jobs will apply to the construction phase, so the permanent jobs number is 700. Still, it’s a start for high-end glass manufacturing in the United States and that could have a long-term effect. Hopefully Apple continues on this path to bring more jobs home to the US.

This article sums up the main problem with Boeing’s Dreamliner. The aggressive strategy of outsourcing as much of 70% of the parts for the new jet created all sorts of problems during the production process.

This was obvious even before the recent battery problems that have caused the FAA to ground the jet. The delivery delays were significant as Boeing couldn’t meet delivery deadlines to the airlines.

It’s one thing to outsource production for toothbrushes. It’s quite another for a sophisticated jet where a slight problem with one part can affect the safety of hundreds of people.

Here’s an interesting article that frames the growth in manufacturing activity in the context of union jobs.

Last July was a good month for factory workers in Anderson, Ind., where a Honda parts supplier announced plans to build a new plant and create up to 325 jobs. But it was a grim month in the Cleveland suburbs, where an industrial plastics firm told the state of Ohio it was closing a plant and laying off 150 people.

Nearly all of the Ohio workers belonged to a labor union. Workers at the Indiana plant don’t. Their fates fit a post-recession pattern: American factories are hiring again, but they’re not hiring union members.

U.S. manufacturers have added a half-million new workers since the end of 2009, making the sector one of the few bright spots in an otherwise weak recovery. And yet there were 4 percent fewer union factory workers in 2012 than there were in 2010, according to federal survey data. On balance, all of the job gains in manufacturing have been non-union.

The trend underscores a central conundrum in the “manufacturing renaissance” that President Obama loves to tout as an economic accomplishment: The new manufacturing jobs are different from the ones that delivered millions of American workers a ticket to the middle class over the past half-century.

There’s definitely a trend to avoid union shops on the part of manufacturers. Frankly, many unions overstepped their mission with ridiculous work rules, and many resources were used to protect the few workers who abused the system.

Now, in tougher economic times and high unemployment, the leverage is just gone for many unions.

With the fracking boom, we’re seeing an explosion of related industries as well. One issue relating to hydraulic fracking has to do with the massive amounts of water used in the process. The water gets contaminated, and then it has to be dealt with. This is even bigger than the problem of potential ground water contamination.

Start-ups, venture capitalists and large companies, including Veolia and Siemens, see riches in water cleanup and are developing and testing various technologies. They are also working in other areas besides shale gas, including Canada’s oil sands and the use of water to pressure oil out of wells.

One of these companies is Ecosphere Technologies of Stuart, Florida, which uses ozone as a disinfectant to clean water in a process called advanced oxidation. The treatment, which does not use chemicals, can both eliminate the chemicals typically used for bacteria control and scale inhibition during fracking and recycle 100 percent of the water, according to Charles Vinick, the company’s chief executive.

Ecosphere says it has cleaned more than two billion gallons of water and eliminated the need for more than 1.7 million gallons of chemicals at approximately 600 oil and natural gas wells in U.S. shale fields since 2008.

The developments are very encouraging, both from an economic point of view and an environmental point of view, and this should help the overall fracking business which has been an economic boom for the US.