U.S. manufacturing jobs fading away fast

Yahoo/USA Today ^ | Fri Dec 13, 7:48 AM ET | Barbara Hagenbaugh

[arete]

ROCHESTER, N.Y. -- Charles Seitz remembers when Rochester was a bustling manufacturing town. Now, all the 58-year-old unemployed engineer sees is a landscape of empty buildings.

''There's nothing made here anymore,'' the former Eastman Kodak employee says, his eyes welling with tears as he talks about his struggle to find a new job. ''Wealth is really created by making things. I still adhere to that.''

It's a situation that's been playing out across the country for decades but has received increased attention in recent years.

Fifty years ago, a third of U.S. employees worked in factories, making everything from clothing to lipstick to cars. Today, a little more than one-tenth of the nation's 131 million workers are employed by manufacturing firms. Four-fifths are in services.

The decline in manufacturing jobs has swiftly accelerated since the beginning of 2000. Since then, more than 1.9 million factory jobs have been cut -- about 10% of the sector's workforce. During the same period, the number of jobs outside manufacturing has risen close to 2%.

Many of the factory jobs are being cut as companies respond to a sharp rise in global competition. Unable to raise prices -- and often forced to cut them -- companies must find any way they can to reduce costs and hang onto profits.

Jobs are increasingly being moved abroad as companies take advantage of lower labor costs and position themselves to sell products to a growing -- and promising -- market abroad. Economy.com, an economic consulting firm in West Chester, Pa., estimates 1.3 million manufacturing jobs have been moved abroad since the beginning of 1992 -- the bulk coming in the last three years. Most of those jobs have gone to Mexico and East Asia.

Last month, film giant Eastman Kodak -- the largest employer in Rochester and the central focus of the community since the company was founded by George Eastman in 1888 -- announced it was shutting down an area plant and laying off the 500 employees who make single-use, sometimes called ''throw-away,'' cameras. The work will now be done in China or Mexico, two countries where the company already has operations.

The movement of jobs to other countries angers Seitz the most.

''The United States got to where it is today by making things,'' he says. ''People are suffering, and communities are suffering.''

[Mortimer Snavely]

About all that many, perhaps most people can handle are these slogans and this mindless idolotry. Nobody reads anymore; if something can't be comprehended at a glance with some clever witticism as a summation it makes people's eyes glaze over and they lose interest. These days one doesn't need to be stoned to act stoned.

[desertcry]

Expect a bunch of militery interventions.... Yes, we are still the one, and only Hyperpower of this world, and our military has never been stronger(thanks to GWB). But I think it is still easier, and more productive in the long run to fix our education system, if the USA is to survive as it is.

[VOA]

For about 10 thow-away cameras that take crappy pictures one could probably buy a cheap
digital camera that takes better pictures which cost much less to store than the
cost of film processing for the throw-aways.
So, what's the big fuss about?

1. Lots of Americans aren't willing to undergo the learning curve needed to
use digital cameras. Trust me, I help some of these folks and digital camera
technology in a major research university setting is like magic
to them...totally incomprehensible.
A PhD in the physical sciences doesn't assure that someone is intelligent enough
to understand how to use a digital camera and/or process digital image files.

2. Those Americans intelligent (or motivated) enough to use digital camera technology
quickly discern that Kodak was asleep at the station when the Digital Camera Express
left the station.

It never fails to astound me when a publically-traded company based in The United
States of America forgets the prime catch-phrase of capitalism and entreprenurial spirit:
"The Quick and The Dead"

[Karsus]

And how many R&D jobs of that level could be provide for Americans?

[Mortimer Snavely]

Maybe when you cool down a bit...

What, pray tell, is the appropriate emotional response to those whose entire mission in life is the destruction of everything which makes life worth living?

[William Terrell]

All this is smoke and mirrors of a service economy. You can't eat service. You can't wear it and you can't build buildings and battleships out of it.

The only problem is that when this truth becomes clear to those who are focused on their own tiny world of inexpensiveness and comfort, it will to late.

[RLK]

The only problem is that when this truth becomes clear to those who are focused on their own tiny world of inexpensiveness and comfort, it will to late.

----------------------

That's what it's all about.

[desertcry]

DC you do not seem to get it... So, what should we do about it? Remember this country was built on Free Enterprise, which means open competation, ie. the best, and least expensive survives. If your solution is to build an artificial barrier (Closed market for labor, and goods), then we will be going against what made this country great, and everybody loses in the long run. IMHO our only chance is to continue to increase our level of skill, and creativity(meaning improvement of our education system). I don't know what else to do, do you?

[Joe Hadenuf]

Digital camera are great for composing and can attach directly to a PC for distribution, but they do not take better pictures than film cameras.

You are so correct.

However, in other applications digital, CCDs (charged coupled devices) cameras for astronomical purposes are making huge advancements. Due to the advancement of extremely light sensitive chips and cooling procedures, backyard astronomers, can take digital images of distant galaxies or other extremely low light astronomical images in 100 second exposures that used to take 60 minutes and more with film.

This enables one to considerable limit critical tracking time of a celestial objects and eliminates the fogging effect produced by light pollution during long tedious exposures with film.

But you are correct, films still currently produces higher resoulution and better quality images for pictures of Uncle Bob and the dog, but using digital imaging in some applications is the wave of the future.

I know this is a little off subject but thought I would throw it in, even though you are probably well aware of these advancements.

[Mortimer Snavely]

"I don't know what else to do, do you?"

Howabout allowing foreign manufacturers access to the USA only in direct proportion that equivalent US manufactured goods have access to the markets of those countries which want to sell manufactured goods here?

[desertcry]

And how many R&D jobs of that level..... You will be surprised. Remember the invention of the modern computer during WWII, and how many jobs it spawned? Of course the rest of the world will catch up, so we get moving. But that's life survival of the fittest. Artificial barrier just won't work, the commies tried it, and look what happened to them.

[desertcry]

mission in life is the destruction of everything.... I can assure you, I have no motive or intention of destroying anybody's life. I'm just a poor old man, living on SS, trying hard to make ends meet. But I do believe in Free Enterprise deeply as the major reason for Americas well being.

[Mortimer Snavely]

"Artificial barrier (sic) just won't work..."

Actually, they do work very well. They explain the Japanese Miracle, for example. We need to understand that trading with Red China and other Confucian hegemonistic states is trading with the enemy in a World Trade War which they started.

[Karsus]

But most of those are low-level tech jobs that, according to some, should be moved to India/China because it is 'cheaper'.

On the subject of artificial barriers, isn't that what the H1B visa program has become? An artificial barrier to Americans that would like those jobs? Why get a degree in tech if you have to compete againts people who happily make so little?

[Karsus]

Will never happen. Too many politicians get too many payoffs/bribes to allow something like that to pass.

[Mortimer Snavely]

"But I do believe in Free Enterprise deeply as the major reason for Americas well being."

Countries like Red China understand how virtues, such as free enterprise, can be manipulated against those who believe in them to their own destruction. This is why we're in a World Trade War, and why free enterprise with Confucian hegemonists and national socialists is not a good thing at all, because it promises to destroy us.

[desertcry]

I agree there should be no artificial barrier between us and our trading partners. It should never be one sided.

[Mortimer Snavely]

Foreign lobbying is a detestable thing not countenanced in other lands.

[RLK]

But I do believe in Free Enterprise deeply as the major reason for Americas well being.

----------------------

What does sending jobs to socialist or similar countries have to do with free enterprise?

[desertcry]

trading with red china..... I don't pretend to know the whole inside/out , and any details with our trading with the red chinese. But if there is injustice, and onesidedness in the red chinese favor, I will be very much against it, just like any fairminded Americans, or chinese.