The loss of a job can be devastating to the individual and his or her family. No area of the country has felt it more than here in the Midwest, where manufacturing has been the backbone of our economy for more than a century. The declining number of manufacturing jobs is really part of a longer-term trend, not just a recent phenomenon. In 1950 manufacturing employment represented about 35% of private-sector jobs. By the year 2004 it had fallen to 12%. Yet, the U.S. is still the world’s biggest producer of manufactured goods. Of course, a key reason has been the constant improvements in productivity. One hour of work in 2000, produced four times as much manufacturing output as it did in 1950. The real culprit has been a mismatch between productivity and domestic demand for the past five years. We’ve had to rely on strong consumer spending, especially on homes and cars to carry the economy back to health. And going forward, we’ll see that the global economic picture will have a much bigger impact on U.S.-manufactured goods. In the steel processing business, our job is to work with manufacturers and help to keep them competitive. We are subject, as they are, to the ups and downs of the national and global economy. For instance, within the last 24 months we’ve seen our prices for steel rise and fall dramatically as China sucked up much of the world’s capacity to satisfy its enormous infrastructure building needs. Then, as Chinese mills came on line, they became a net exporter of steel products and prices at home, while still high, have settled down somewhat. ""It seems the common thought and discussion in the media right now is that all the manufacturing jobs in America have gone or are going offshore. It’s true that manufacturing employment is down about 10%, or about 1.6 million manufacturing jobs since the last recession began in November 2001. Economic recoveries such as we’re in right now usually restore those lost jobs. That doesn’t appear to be happening this time.
So even the "steel guy" seems to note a few bumps in the road.
According to some pundits and political hustlers, free trade has led to a loss of "good manufacturing jobs." Let's look at it, but before doing so, let's first see whether we should work ourselves into a tizzy over other job losses.
In 1900, 41 percent of the U.S. labor force was employed in agriculture. Now, only two percent of today's labor force works in agricultural jobs. If declining employment is used as a gauge of an industry's health, agriculture is America's sickest industry.
Let's not stop with agriculture. In 1970, the telecommunications industry employed 421,000 workers in good-paying jobs as switchboard operators. Today, the telecommunications industry employs only 78,000 operators. That's a tremendous 80 percent job loss. What happened to all those agriculture and switchboard operator jobs? Were they exported to China and India by rapacious businessmen?
< snip >
How about the claim that our manufacturing jobs are going to China? The fact of business is, since 2000, China has lost 4.5 million manufacturing jobs, compared with the loss of 3.1 million in the U.S.
< excerpted >
View entire article here