No, widgets are made in China or Mexico, where it often requires MORE, but cheaper people. But widgets are then bulk-shipped to the US, where it takes fewer Americans to simply repackage them for individual retail sale. The Institute for Supply Management calls this repackaging "manufacturing", even though it really isn't.
What you call "repackaging", everyone else considers manufacturing. True, a Chinese worker might make a medium-value item such as a tire, and a Mexican worker might make another medium-value item such as a seat. However, those items are then manufactured into a high-value manufactured item known as a "BMW" by American workers.
There are cost efficiencies in having lesser-skilled workers put together cheaper items. However, at the end of the day, American workers are the ones manufacturing the big-ticket item at the end of the manufacturing chain.
That is a good thing. Wasting the highly-trained, efficient American worker on textiles and other low-end manifacturing is not smart economic policy.
That's just great Willie, turn our economy into a bunch of freakin' low wage widget makers. I remember going to college to become a widget maker. The professors thought I had a future. Unfortunately, I got stuck being a high paid professional. Now that my kids are going to college, I'll be damned if I'm gonna spend $100,000 for higher education and have them fail to become widget makers.
I told my son, if you don't start making widgets by your junior year, during the summer, I'm pulling the plug on tuition.