May 31--In its heyday, Speer Products Inc. was a thriving chemical manufacturer in Memphis, employing about 200 people who mixed and packaged liquid and aerosol products, including bug spray and pet shampoo.

A decade later, when the company's founder hit retirement age, some employees say the family-owned business struggled to keep up with higher-tech competitors. The company was sold in 2007 to a Chattanooga-based investor, who ultimately led it into bankruptcy and forced the recent layoff of almost 100 employees.

Speer's fate is not unique; the Memphis metropolitan area has shed about 16,000, or 24 percent, of its manufacturing jobs since 1998 as companies have moved from the area, closed or reduced operation, an analysis of labor statistics shows. The numbers cover industry in Greater Memphis, which comprises eight counties in Tennessee, Mississippi and Arkansas.

The data, provided by Tennessee's Department of Labor and Workforce Development, reveals a migration of job growth from manufacturing companies toward growth in government, education and health service work. The trend has punished those without advanced degrees.

"If you took the data back another 20 years, you would see a straight-line erosion of our manufacturing base," said John Gnuschke, director of the Sparks Bureau of Business and Economic Research at the University of Memphis.

"Where does that leave the guy with the high school diploma who needs a manufacturing job? That leaves him at a loss," he said.

For decades, Levi-Strauss, International Harvester, Coors and Firestone, to name a few, had plants here, providing the income and livelihood for thousands of working-class families. But those companies have since closed, moved or been outsourced to foreign countries where labor comes cheaper. Better technology has also streamlined production, reducing the need to for as many laborers, Gnuschke said.

Not confined to Memphis, the erosion of American manufacturing work has happened nationwide. Tennessee has lost 27 percent of its manufacturing base in the last decade, and nationally the sector lost 1.2 million jobs since September 2008, federal labor statistics show. That number could take a greater hit with the potential loss of American car companies.

William Fox, director of the Center for Business & Economic Research at the University of Tennessee, agrees it is "increasingly a problem for low-skilled people to find opportunities in the U.S."

Yet the answer, he said, is not to create more low-skilled opportunities but to equip the American workers with greater abilities to keep up.