Unskilled labor is cheap and that is why jobs went overseas. You can’t build a product here and pay employees $30 per hour when the same task can be accomplished for a dollar an hour in Asia. I know that much of our remaining manufacturing is done on high tech equipment but the older, more dangerous equipment we used 25+ years ago is likely being used today in Asia.
BUT, those Asian manufacturers are now taking their profits (off that old 'dangerous' equipment) and investing in competing manufacturing technologies and, MORE IMPORTANTLY, improving their labor force with skills to run and maintain those new manufacturing technologies.
These moves are something that goes crosswise with the our country's union mentality.
I had this very conversation with a Plant Manager in Mexico - this was 10-12 years ago, right at the height of shipping stuff over there.
He told me that if you pay Americans $9-10/hour, they get P.O.'d and quit on you. He said that where he was (and at that time) they paid the local labor pool $9-10 / day, plus benefit,s and they were thrilled because they were making three times what they could doing the same thing elsewhere. And working inside, with medical care, and so on.
It was an eye-opener, to be sure.