Posted on 08/21/2009 8:18:06 AM PDT by BGHater
Manufacturing employment in the U.S. peaked in June 1979 with 19,553,000 jobs (data here), and by July of this year manufacturing employment had fallen to 11,817,000, the lowest level of manufacturing jobs since April 1941 (see chart above).
As a percent of the total labor force, manufacturing employment fell below 9% in July (see chart below), the lowest level in BLS history (back to 1939).
Well, Oregen’s Tektronics is moving hundreds of manufacturing high tech jobs to China this year, it was announced yesterday. The china-bootlicking POS politicians deserve to be tried for treason.
Extrapolating the curve, we won’t be manufacturing anything by 2020!
“Extrapolating the curve, we won’t be manufacturing anything by 2020!”
No manufacturing base = no freedom.
Isn’t it wonderful that virtually everything we buy and use from socks, to shoes, to shirts, to radios, to car parts, to computers, to toys, to nails, to wrenches, to dishes, to pots, to buckles, to bells, and virtually everything else is made in communist China? Aaah, the wonders of “free trade”.
There are some people on this forum that have been cheering this decline for years.
There was an interesting article posted yesterday? that pointed out jobs by sector is not a zero-sum game, that when you do historical comparison back to before there was such a thing as a service sector (as we know it today), the rise in these new sectors will cause the percentage of the older ones to go down. True we’re not building schlock anymore but the manufacturing sector is going great guns, present Obamacession discounted. IOW, it isn’t a disaster.
But what is the actual manufacturing output? After all, the purpose of manufacturing is to make things, not employ workers. If a few guys can make everything that is needed, that is good, not bad.
We need to get back to ‘making things’ in our country. We have replaced production with consumption fueled by easy credit. That can’t be sustained over the long term.
On the long run, ‘we’ can't consume our way out of this, nor can we keep doing the status quo. There is no tech bubble, housing bubble, etc. out there.
"Great Guns"? It's up about 2 percent.
Industrial production nationwide rose for the first time in nine months in July, the Fed reported last week. General Motors and Chrysler Group LLC, the two U.S. automakers that emerged from bankruptcy, opened plants and benefited from the program to lift sales of fuel-efficient cars. From here.
It's all on account of the CARS program and cannot last since the program is about to end. It's a spike that, if the govt. stops spending our money on unions, will not last.
Relative runs a factory in Oregon. Recently competitors have moved to states with favorable treatment towards minority businesses, allowing them to undercut the price of the factory in Oregon.
He complained to his Oregon rep that the legislature needed to get humping to do SOMETHING to redress the imbalance and stimulate job growth in Oregon and was basically told to ‘buzz off’.
Manufacturing jobs are disappearing worldwide, not just here, because efficiencies demand it.
Manufacturing jobs will be to this century what farming jobs were to the last.
Her is the article I mentioned: Manufactured Objections by Daniel Ikenson in the NRO.
Salient points:
Your fleece trade job exporting deals at work.
To recover we have to make more of what we consume. The economic model of ‘buy and sell’ has come up short.
Hey, think things are bad now? Just wait and see what happens if Cap’n Tax is allowed to steer U.S. industry.
At that point the prodcut becomes a commodity and everything will be price driven.
None the less manufacturing jobs are disappearing worldwide.
Over the past decade, U.S. manufacturing jobs have declined by more than 11 percent.
But at the same time, Japan’s manufacturing employment base has dropped by 16 percent, while the number of manufacturing jobs in countries including Brazil have declined by 20 percent.
This trend has an asymptotic limit of course.
I dont see the problem here. Manufacturing here in the US is just too costly anoymore. I have a business which I need to have products made for. I have what I need done in other countries because its so much cheaper. My profit margin has tripled. Why pay someone 10 bucks an hour when I can have it done for 50 cents an hour? What business in their right mind would pay for labor that is many times more expensive? I think people just need to get used to the fact that labor is expensive to profits, and the less I have to pay labor the better. Its why unions need to be busted up as well.
Sorry, but people need to be competitive with other countries and just used to a lower standard of living. Its inevitable.
Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.