Posted on 05/12/2015 11:38:31 AM PDT by Olog-hai
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. …
(Excerpt) Read more at cnsnews.com ...
Reuters: “Global minimum wage”
http://www.reuters.com/subjects/global-minimum-wage
I’m not sure free trade Republicans can make headway using this.
And where did those jobs go....China! Remember the trade missions, thank you Bill Clinton
Conclusions:
1. In 1979, even toys were made in the USA. That ship sailed long ago. So did radio and TV manufacture, and textiles (moved from Northeast, to South (”docile labor”) then offshore). So, yes a lot of it moved away (China etc.)
2. There’s still a manufacturing base in the USA. But there’s lots more automation now. So fewer human beings needed.
3. Said human beings with HS degree or less could make a decent living in US manufacturing back in the day. Now they have to work in low paying service jobs—or the netherworld of crime.
In before the buggy whip reference.
Manufacturing jobs are down 7,300,000 since 1979.
But, how many technology bad information jobs are we up since 1979?
Intel’s CEO, 2007:
“The U.S. legal environment has become so hostile to business, Otellini said, that there is likely to be “an inevitable erosion and shift of wealth, much like we’re seeing today in Europe—this is the bitter truth.”
As a result, he said, “every business in America has a list of more variables than I’ve ever seen in my career.” If variables like capital gains taxes and the R&D tax credit are resolved correctly, jobs will stay here, but if politicians make decisions “the wrong way, people will not invest in the United States. They’ll invest elsewhere.”
Take factories. “I can tell you definitively that it costs $1 billion more per factory for me to build, equip, and operate a semiconductor manufacturing facility in the United States,” Otellini said
The rub: Ninety percent of that additional cost of a $4 billion factory is not labor but the cost to comply with taxes and regulations that other nations don’t impose.
(Cypress Semiconductor CEO T.J. Rodgers elaborated on this in an interview with CNET, saying the problem is not higher U.S. wages but antibusiness laws: “The killer factor in California for a manufacturer to create, say, a thousand blue-collar jobs is a hostile government that doesn’t want you there and demonstrates it in thousands of ways.”)
The company that I work for has doubled the headcounts of their 3 manufacturing plants within the last 7 years. Nothing but insane growth in this industry (automotive supplier). I’ve been recruiting Mechanical and Electrical Engineers non-stop for half a decade.
Fewer high school students were taught trades. Almost all were put on a college prep path where they could major in education, liberal arts and sociology.
The tech jobs went away to china and wherever while we stocked our labor markets with hospitality, service trade and government bureaucrats.
“The tech jobs went away to china and wherever while we stocked our labor markets with hospitality, service trade and government bureaucrats.”
During the Clinton years, I remember how the Mainstream Media was praising the out-forcing of those “Dirty Factories” and cheering the change to a “Clean, Green Service Economy!”.
Now the butcher’s bill is due.
Why bother to work??
FREE Medicaid, 60 Million people and
more millions becoming eligible under Obamacare
FREE Food stamps for 48 Million
$800/month family of 4
FREE Breakfast & Lunch at schools
FREE Rent subsidy
FREE Heat subsidy
FREE or Subsidized Obamacare (87% who joined)
FREE Obama phones
FREE Contraceptives
FREE Mammograms
FREE Abortions
FREE Pre-natal care & delivery
FREE Transportation to medical facility
FREE Translators for non-English speaking
FREE Lawyers for the indigent
FREE Pell Grants
FREE Daycare
FREE CASH! Under the Family
Independence (FI) program the takers
are given a charged debit card.
Supplementary Social Security checks
for senior immigrants even if they have
never worked 1 hour in USA.
Actually, if you look at the graph, the sharpest decline was during the GWB years, and it’s been climbing slowly since 2009. What’s up with that?
Tariffs
This stat does not make seems wrong: In 1979 Jimmy Carter was the President and we were suffering from Stagflation. Unemployment was at 10% and this was the peak of manufacturing? I would have guessed that it peaked under Ronaldus Magnus and the economic boom. This does not pass the smell test.
Isn’t there something about teachers getting SS if they only work one day?
We’ve hired 15 people in the past two months. Auto parts, feast or famine. That being said, my two co-workers are robots.
While I'd rather have things manufactured in the US, the unions screwed up everything. Remember all the strikes that would automobile manufacturing...and result in much more expensive cars when the factories opened up again?
Destroy unions, and then bring back manufacturing to the US.
We can thank NAFTA , the WTO and free trade.. this is why there is no “recovery” from the recession.. In recessions past when demand returned industry recalled ... no more. Now if there were to be recalls they would be in 3rd world countries ...not here
We now have Bush Sr’s “New World Order
And that’s the crux of the matter.
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