Hopefully your mileage will be better. But I wouldn't count on it.
Here is the graphic referred to in the article that, for me, makes the case that U.S. manufacturing is quite healthy and growing (despite the hit we took in 2008.)
Posted on 07/28/2016 5:37:52 AM PDT by expat_panama
Did you hear that U.S. manufacturing just had another big month? That output has risen about 20 percent in the past six years? That industrial capacity is actually expanding?
Probably not. At most times, and especially in election season, the talk surrounding U.S. manufacturing is one of relentless decline: a loss of jobs, the shutting down of factories, increased competition from foreign countries, a global war in which the U.S. seems to be on the losing end.
And of course, it’s true. At some level, manufacturing has declined dramatically — as a direct employer of American workers. According to the Bureau of Labor Statistics, 12.3 million Americans had payroll jobs in manufacturing in June. That’s down about 30,000 from June 2015, off nearly 1.9 million from June 2006, and down 4.9 million from 1996. In the past 20 years, in other words, America has shed 28 percent of its manufacturing jobs. In good times and bad, in recession and expansion, the manufacturing sector employs fewer people. It’s impossible to dismiss or talk around this trend.
But the decline of employment isn’t the whole story. Not by a long shot. In fact, in many significant ways, U.S. manufacturing is thriving. The point of manufacturing is to make stuff that people and companies will buy and use, not to employ people to make stuff. And by the former measure, U.S. manufacturing is actually doing quite well. (Note: Rex Nutting at Marketwatch made this point back in March.)
Take a look at this long-term chart of industrial production, courtesy of the U.S. Federal Reserve. Over the past 100 years, the index, which measures the value of the output of the manufacturing, mining, and utilities industries, has risen steadily. But the rise has generally continued in the last several decades — decades in which the narrative was that manufacturing has been in apparent decline.
What accounts for this disconnect between the rising dollar value of manufactured goods and falling employment? A few things. First, the production of less-expensive goods, like T-shirts, toys, and the like, has long since gone offshore. As a result, manufacturing in the U.S. is disproportionately a high-end activity: heavy machinery, tools, cars. I visited a General Electric plant in South Carolina a few years ago that made gas turbines for power plants — at US$90 million apiece. Boeing makes large airplanes in this country, which can cost about $200 million each. America may not make as many objects as it did 30 years ago, but the average value of an object made in the U.S. has risen sharply.
Second, there’s productivity. Manufacturing, from the outset, has been a pioneer in labor-saving technology. A century ago, Frederick Winslow Taylor walked around factories with stopwatches to time workers and suggest improvements. Henry Ford spend untold hours devising a hyper-efficient assembly line. Then came total quality management, Six Sigma, lean manufacturing, and all the other trends and practices. The overriding imperative driving these efforts has always been to figure out how to produce more (and faster) with fewer resources — raw materials, energy, effort, and, yes, labor.
In an often-overlooked phenomenon, quarter after quarter, year after year, companies have invested in and applied technology to the manufacturing process. Recent advances in computer technology have transformed efficiency efforts from an analog undertaking to a digital one.
The result is that factories today can actually be slightly eerie places, especially to someone accustomed to working in a densely populated newsroom or trading floor. Over the past several years, I’ve visited a range of factories: a steel fabrication plant in New York, a window manufacturer in Florida, car factories in Ohio, a frozen-French fry plant in North Dakota, a jet-engine plant in North Carolina, a producer of plastic coffee pods in Virginia, a jar manufacturer in Indiana, and a fishing-line producer in South Carolina. The common denominator in each: There just aren’t that many people in them. There are lots of whirring gizmos, belts that move goods through the stages of production, and machines that package and stack the finished products on pallets. But the people on the floor are mostly involved in tending to raw materials, quality control, maintenance, and oversight.
There’s a third point that is overlooked when we focus only on direct factory employment as a measure of manufacturing’s strength. Manufacturing has, to a large degree, unintegrated. That is to say, the activity you see on the factory floor is the culmination of all sorts of other activity that happened elsewhere. A rule of thumb in the gas-turbine or jet-engine business, for example, holds that for every job in the factory, there are eight in the supply chain.
And those aren’t just jobs at the manufactures of the components that are assembled in the factory. In fact, there are a lot of service jobs involved with manufacturing, many of which are done by people who don’t work directly at manufacturers. All the materials have to be moved — on trucks, trains, and planes. Marketing and sales professionals help goods find buyers. Factories wouldn’t be able to run without security, maintenance, landscaping, and food service.
Put another way, manufacturing may not simply be more robust than is commonly understood; it may support more employment than many people think.
Of course, it’s natural to discuss direct employment when determining the state of manufacturing in a given country. There’s an important human story behind every job that has been lost in manufacturing over the years. But when we’re trying to grasp the implications of complex economic phenomena and technological change, one data point doesn’t always tell the entire story.
...the talk surrounding U.S. manufacturing is one of relentless decline: a loss of jobs, the shutting down of factories, increased competition from foreign countries, a global war in which the U.S. seems to be on the losing end.
And of course, it’s true. At some level, manufacturing has declined dramatically — as a direct employer of American workers...
The idea is that if there are more and more unemployed factory workers then the U.S. manufacturing sector is collapsing.
At the same time others point out that if America makes more stuff than ever then our manufacturing sector's great. The difference of opinion revolves around the question of why we have a manufacturing sector in the first place: some say the the reason we build factories is for making things and others say we build factories so that's where the unemployed can sit while we give them money.
tx fer the headsup!
Is this an attempt to put a positive spin on Obama’s legacy?
What US manufacturing?
The steel plant in Bethlehem PA that’s now a casino?
The manufacturing plants that were scared out of Manhattan NY in the 1950s due to left-wing social policies that required increased taxation and regulation?
Alexander Hamilton may have had a big-government bent, but he sure was right about needing the means of “subsistence, habitation, clothing and defense” within our borders.
U.S. Bureau of Labor and their statistics ?
Uh ha.
George Orwell, anyone?
Our other loyal government beanies say our unemployment rate is 5%
There is some truth to this article. You can automate factories and produce more (& better quality) with fewer people. However, I also thought they changed the definition of manufacturing at some point, to include food service workers.
Hopefully your mileage will be better. But I wouldn't count on it.
Here is the graphic referred to in the article that, for me, makes the case that U.S. manufacturing is quite healthy and growing (despite the hit we took in 2008.)
I reality manufacturing jobs are disappearing worldwide.
Actually, it’s because manufacturing is becoming increasingly automated, and thus, creates fewer jobs.
And the displaced workers generally don’t have the skills or training, and, often, the aptitude, for the more difficult, technology-intensive jobs that remain.
This is an increasingly common problem as things go on: we are literally creating work that only a small portion of the population can do.
The flip side of the problem, is the one Mike Rowe often addresses: the lack of Skilled Labor. The schools push kids towards College and away from “vo-tech” fields, which are often hurting for lack of qualified skilled labor. . . .
And why should we believe anything out of the executive department, again?
There is some truth in this article. The big ticket items are made, or at least assembled in the U.S., but the items most Americans use are not. Look around your own house. Buicks are soon to be made in China.
The global company I work for is actually building a huge manufacturing plant at our campus. It will be a plant staffed by robots.
The bigger point is, what is manufacturing as percentage of US gross product. And also, could such a sector, as in the past, be large enough to eliminate (or prevent) a welfare state, thus encouraging the return of the family and keeping all Marxist social policies at bay.
You don't have to if you don't want to.
But you should spend some time looking for other sources to justify a downturn in manufacturing output rather than simply dismissing the idea that it is actually growing. I don't think you will find it.
You do realize that any executive department = Obama, right?
Of course. I also look at the data from 1980 to 1988. Do you believe that data?
What statistics to you have from what source that contradicts it?
Pro administration piece. Very suspicious. Seems like lots of this during the convention.
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