A vow to restore manufacturing was at the heart of Democrat Virg Benero’s campaign for governor.

Republican challenger Rick Snyder repeatedly said Michigan must reinvent its economy to become more innovative, entrepreneurial and globally competitive.

Using computer industry jargon, the self-described nerd labeled his post-industrial plan as “Michigan 3.0.” (Agricultural was 1.0; the Industrial Revolution was 2.0)

Snyder described a new Michigan in which entrepreneurs create businesses in an environment of lower taxes and fewer government regulations.

Detroit and other large cities in the state would rise again. Young college graduates would flock here to catch the buzz of Michigan 3.0.

Although it lacked crucial details, Michigan residents voted for Snyder’s vision by electing him governor on Tuesday.

And some recent research from the Federal Reserve Bank of Chicago bears out Snyder’s view that Michigan must transform its traditional metal-bending economy.

As I’ve said before, manufacturing isn’t going away. It will continue to generate economic wealth.

But it will do so with fewer workers, especially those without at least some college education.

In a recent paper, Federal Reserve Bank of Chicago senior economist Bill Strauss took a look at manufacturing trends over the past 60 years. Bottom line: manufacturing is shrinking as a percentage of the overall economy and likely will continue to contract.

Manufacturing employed about 31 percent of the nonfarm work force in 1950. But that percentage had fallen to just 9.1 percent by 2009.

In 2006, the year before the Great Recession hit, there were about 14 million manufacturing workers in the United States, the same number of workers employed in U.S. factories as in 1950, according to Strauss.

But over the past 60 years, manufacturing output jumped 600 percent.

So how did manufacturers turn out six times as many goods with the same number of workers they had in the days of Harry Truman’s presidency?

The answer is huge productivity gains, made possible by improved processes and the implementation of robots and other factory automation.

“What took 1,000 workers to produce in 1950 could be produced with 184 workers in 2009,” Strauss said.

But improved efficiencies in manufacturing also have led to it becoming a smaller share of the overall economy, as measured in dollars.

How so? As manufacturing became more productive, the price of many goods either rose more slowly over time, or fell.

For example, while inflation averaged 3.7 percent a year between 1980 and 2009, vehicle prices rose just 1.7 percent annually.

As a result, manufacturing’s share of U.S. nominal gross domestic product fell from 27 percent in 1950 to 12.1 percent in 2007, according to Strauss.

Manufacturing output also has slowed over the past 30 years to about half its annual growth rate of 4.2 percent between 1950 and 1979.

That’s in part due to consumers purchasing more foreign-made goods. But the slowdown also is a result of growth in services, including entertainment, recreation, financial services and, most notably, health care.

University of Michigan economist Don Grimes said he thinks the gap between the service and manufacturing economies will widen.

“I strongly suspect that the trend we have seen since 1979 will continue, if not accelerate, as the baby boomers reach retirement age,” he said. “Manufacturing will not disappear any more than farming has, but it will be a smaller and smaller share of our economy.”

It appears Snyder has chosen the right course for Michigan. Now he faces the tough task of steering the economically stressed state through some very choppy waters.

E-mail Rick Haglund at haglund.rick@gmail.com