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Reread this part. We're manufacturing double the amount of goods in the past 30 years. I can't confirm the author's facts, but it makes absolute common sense that technology has allowed us to reduce the amount of manual labor involved in manufacturing. If you can get a machine to do work for you, that's just as good for an individual as it is for a society. It makes us more efficient, freeing up a pair of hands to create something new on top of what they were already creating. No one should need or want to do the same job for their entire life.

Real manufacturing output today is nearly twice what it was in 1987, when NAFTA’s predecessor, the Canada–U.S. Free Trade Agreement, was negotiated. Manufacturing output per man-hour has skyrocketed as investments in information technology and automation pay off, which is the main reason a smaller share of the work force is employed in manufacturing even as output continues its steady climb. Fewer people work in our factories today because we’ve gotten better at running them.