Posted on 05/13/2015 6:43:50 AM PDT by xzins
The number of jobs in manufacturing has declined by 7,231,000--or 37 percent--since employment in manufacturing peaked in the United States in 1979, according to data published by the Bureau of Labor Statistics.
The real median household income of Americans who have completed high school--but have not attained a higher degree--also peaked in the 1970s and has declined since then.
In fact, according to the Census Bureau (Tables H-13 and H-14), the real median household income of an American householder who has completed four years of high school peaked in 1973 at $56,395 in constant 2013 dollars. By 2013, it was down to $40,701. That is a drop of $15,694--or 27.8 percent. (The Census Bureau's Table H-14 publishes the annual median household income from 1960 through 1990 of householders who have "completed" four years of high school. Table H-13 publishes the annual median household income of householders who have 'graduated" from high school or its equivalency from 1991 through 2013.)
According to the BLS’s seasonally adjusted employment numbers, employment in the U.S. manufacturing sector hit a peak of 19,553,000 in June 1979. In April 2015, there were only 12,322,000 employed in the manufacturing sector. That is a decline of 7,231,000—or 37 percent.
The decline has even been greater as a share of the civilian noninstitutional population, which includes all U.S. residents 16 and older who are not on active duty in the military or in an institution such as a prison or nursing home. (This is the population number that forms the foundation of the BLS’s employment numbers.)
In April 1973, the year median household income peaked for householders who have completed high school but not earned a higher degree, there were 146,459,000 in the civilian noninstitutional population and employment in manufacturing was 18,359,000—or 12.5 percent of the civilian noninstitutional population.
In April 2015, there were 250,266,000 in the civilian noninstitutional population and employment in manufacturing was 12,272,000—or 4.9 percent of the civilian population.
In 1973, manufacturing employment as a share of the civilian noninstutional population was 2.5 times what it is today.
Growth is not supposed to just be in dollars, it is also supposed to be in a balanced prosperity. Otherwise, it is only growth in certain sectors.
The real tragedy are those masquerading as Conservatives that assert that loss of manufacturing jobs is a natural progression in an evolving economy...
...while blatantly ignoring the politics that drive jobs overseas under the stated goal of equalizing global prosperity and calling that ‘free trade’...
Of course offshore manufacturing has been the major reason for the US decline as demonstrated in the graph. However, automation and robots probably are now and will become the major reason for further US manufacturing decline.
The article's focus is faction dogma and it's not about economics, business, or about earning a living. If it did have anything to do with our feeding our families then it would admit that American incomes are up, not down. Let's cut to the facts, that American factories produce more goods with few people and the greater wealth creation has upped most people's incomes.
OK, so the article tried to fog the income part with stats on high school grads, but the fact is that most Americans not only finish high school but proceed to some form of trade-school/college. Those same Census numbers the article cited show real median household incomes increased as employees left manufacturing, peaked decades later, and are still thousands of dollars higher than they were in '79.
Population 2015: 320 million (not including illegals)
My sense is that globalization drives this more than automation. The idea of cheap labor is what drives globalization, and automation is only an issue if the automation process is guaranteed to replace a human with a cost savings. So, it might not be as enticing a direction as some observers might think in some areas.
7 million more high paying jobs right now would be huge. Only about (a measley) half a trillion more in annual incomes.
Only Pat Buchanan takes that view, and he has been repudiated three times by the American people, uninformed as they are.
3 hour rule
see #9
Same thing in sawmills. They built new sawmills that dramatically increased production with way less people.
You are correct on that one. There is no such thing as a "normal" evolution of an economy. It is not foreordained that more developed economies will abandon manufacturing.
In our case, the relative decline in manufacturing (relative -- not absolute -- manufacturing continues to grow in the US) is due to an overinflated dollar that makes foreign goods more affordable than domestic goods.
With a stable dollar and more benign government regulations, the increased capital generated by improved production processes would be reinvested in new lines of manufacturing. Instead, we've siphoned off capital to grow government and playing games with money has replaced investing in the production of tangible goods.
I am not convinced that the few pennies on the dollar saved on third world labor is even passed on to the consumer. It goes to stock holder dividends.
SUPER! That means after lunch if folks lose interest we can post it again!
It would be a good first step but remember that ten million people need to be hired right now to just bring the employment/population ratio back up to pre-2009 levels.
I believe so.
I agree. They’d still be down jobs even if they had the 7 million back.
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