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.

It’s also a major win for the state of Ohio. Another state offered more incentives, but Ohio offered a more favorable regulatory environment along with an ideal site that offers the opportunity for expansion. The proximity of The Ohio State University is also a major plus, along with the many other respected universities in the state.

This will be Intel’s first new manufacturing site in 40 years. Intel has been expanding production in other U.S. plants but this represents a massive new commitment by the company. The project could eventually include eight factories and $100 billion in investment over the next decade when you factor in Intel and its suppliers and partners. The ripple effects will be huge across the state of Ohio. Construction is expected to start this year with 2025 as the target completion date.

Columbus, Ohio is already booming, and this offers an opportunity for the state capital to become a high tech powerhouse. Intel CEO Pat Gelsinger explained that the site could eventually expand to 2,000 acres with eight fabs, with the new site becoming “the Silicon Heartland.” The benefits will ripple across the state as well. Depressed areas like nearby Akron/Canton could benefit as well, along with other parts of the state. But Columbus can now be a destination location for even more tech companies.

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.

Apple CEO Tim Cook says the company will produce one of its existing lines of Mac computers in the United States next year.

Cook made the comments in part of an interview taped for NBC’s “Rock Center,” but aired Thursday morning on “Today” and posted on the network’s website.

In a separate interview with Bloomberg Businessweek, he said that the company will spend $100 million in 2013 to move production of the line to the U.S. from China.

“This doesn’t mean that Apple will do it ourselves, but we’ll be working with people and we’ll be investing our money,” Cook told Bloomberg.

Here’s more context about why so much manufacturing has been done in China.

Cook said in his interview with NBC that companies like Apple chose to produce their products in places like China, not because of the lower costs associated with it, but because the manufacturing skills required just aren’t present in the U.S. anymore.

He added that the consumer electronics world has never really had a big production presence in the U.S. As a result, it’s really more about starting production in the U.S. than bringing it back.

There has been a trend in bringing some manufacturing back from China to the US. But this is big as it relates to technology manufacturing from a tech giant like Apple. Of course Apple has had to deal with Foxconn problems, so that may be driving this, along with the huge PR push Apple will get. But this move could help spur a new tech manufacturing hub, that would be great for the US and for Apple as well.