U.S. manufacturing jobs fading away fast

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

There are about 500,000 of us out here, the last count I saw. Do you think we can go build China's infrastructure now?

They're probably itching for a first-world telephone system over there, so somebody's got to do it - Lord knows, they don't have the expertise to do it themselves. Why not you?

Of course, they probably have linemen out the wazoo, so hopefully that's not your bag. Know anything about those giant frigging Northern Telecom switches? They sell those all over the world. Why not get a job installing and training the locals about the care and feeding of those bad boys? Or, if you have experience in cellular networks, that's even better - the world's going wireless, and you can ride the wave. Lots of those third-world toilets are skipping land lines altogether and going straight to cell networks, especially in places like Africa. Motorola does a boatload of business in the third world - good old Motorola of Schaumburg, Illinois.

But no matter what, the jobs won't come to you. Almost nobody has that luxury any more - I sure as hell don't. Be flexible and be current, and you'll find something. Maybe not for the money you did before, but you'll find something.

But as I said before it is not about I, this is about us as a country.
...
I actually did do some work in Mexico installing a couple of bad boy switches for Avantel.

LOL - so the truth comes out. Not only were you employed in a service industry, you were actively involved in exporting those services to the rest of the world. Which is exactly why we're not going to hell in a handbasket just yet - all those other services I mentioned are exportable too. We don't need shirtmakers and bolt-tighteners - we've got you. ;)

The bottom line is that there's still good jobs out there - it's just that a "good job" is a little different than it was thirty years ago. Let's get people ready for the good jobs of today, not the good jobs of yesterday. And the country will be just fine if we do that ;)

We have the best-educated, most productive workforce in the world - let's not waste it on jobs that are inefficient and unproductive.

You were worried that our best educated most productive workforce in the world was going to get a job they didnt need? Your musings dont really respond to reality.

What people like you can never respond to is the unfair situation where Americans are forced to compete with rules and restrictions and taxes that those outside the country do not.

When our government opens up to the world leaving its citizens at such a disadvantage this is nothing less than a redistribution of our wealth. If complaining about this is classwarfare, it didnt start as envy of the rich. It started as a disregard for America's middle class.

Our country is a society built around our constitution which is the foundation of the government put in place to protect our society. As long as our society demands that there is restrictions on the govt and our freedoms (such as no slavery or no toxic waste in the rivers) then we will not be on equal standing with societies like communist china who can disregard these things.

In the first census in 1790, 90% of Americans lived in rural areas, mainly working as farmers. As agriculture mechanized, the labor content declined steadily. It continues to decline. Today, the 1% of Americans who work as farmers feed the world.

The same thing has happened in manufacturing. Compare a photo of an early auto assembly line and a state-of-the art one. Few people in the latter.

The engineer works in a high-tax, union-infested area with a wretched climate -- upstate New York. He works for a dying company, Eastman Kodak, which produces a technologically obsolete product: film. No wonder he's hurting.

"the unemployment rate in 1992 was 7.5%, and the most recent year for which we have full figures is 2001, for which the unemployment rate was 4.8%."

Do these figures take into account those who are no longer counted because after a year they are considered to have stopped looking for work? As I said before that is the way the Dept. of Labor has fudged unemployment rates to make them look higher. If your assertions are true and we continue to lose manufacturing jobs, then what kind of jobs are being created? Someone working at a steel mill or a printing plant here in the U.S. produces goods and wealth stays here in the states. Someone who works at a Wal-mart or other retailer is making less money and the products are produced overseas and the highest percentage of the wealth goes overseas. Only the stockholders gain when these companies make money. Stocks are not tangible assets. They are fluid.

1984-1992 - 12.2% growth in personal income per capita 1992-2000 - 14.6% growth in personal income per capita

These numbers take into account the dot-com boom of the '90s when assets were based on stock value. Look at them now. Let's wait and see the numbers now after the correction in the stock market.

I still believe that the only way we are going to suvive as the world's economic power is if we maintain our industrial base.

What is your response to the massive trade deficit that we have with China, Taiwan, etc. Do you not see that as wealth going overseas strengthening these countries and weakening ours?

How many Tech/software companies have been hit with OSHA fines?

That is a pretty big question. Really, I am not sure I get your point. Can you elaborate please?

Until you get back to me, I will try to answer your question with the following.

The 10 Most Frequently Violated OSHA Standards
(Tech companies do not escape 5 of the 10 violations)

1. Hazard communication. Failure to develop an adequate written plan (1926.059 EO1).
2. Hazard communication. Failure to provide employee information and training (1926.059H).
3. Employee training. Failure to train employees to perform work safely (1926.021 B02).
4. Head protection. Failure to wear headgear to protect against falling objects or electrical shock (1926.100 A).
5. Hazard communication. Failure to obtain a material safety data sheet for all hazardous chemicals (1926.059 G01).
6. Floor and wall openings. Failure to guard open-sided floors, platforms and runways 6 feet or higher (1926.500 D01).
7. Hazard communication. Failure to maintain material safety data sheets for hazardous chemicals (1926.059 G08).
8. Wiring design and protection. Failure to use ground fault circuit interrupters (1926.404 B01).
9. Scaffolding. Failure to install guardrails, toeboards or wire mesh on tubular frame scaffolds (1926.451 D10).
10. Excavations. Failure to use a protective system (i.e., trench box) to protect employees in excavations (1926.652 A01).

As a bit of elaboration, the five items highlighted in bold involve quite detailed record keeping regulations that OSHA itself can not always interpret.

As an example, in an informal conference set up with OSHA to review company violations, five OSHA inspectors, including two senior agency heads, spent the better part of an hour trying to answer a request for clarification on and application of a rule. They could not interpret and apply their own code.

You were worried that our best educated most productive workforce in the world was going to get a job they didnt need? Your musings dont really respond to reality.

Of course they do. It's not about getting jobs they "don't need", it's about efficiency and productivity. It makes no sense to spend the time and money to put someone through medical school to make them a qualified doctor, and then put them to work making donuts. It's wasteful and inefficient. And in exactly the same manner, it's wasteful and inefficient to try to prop up things like textiles - let's concentrate on the things we do better than everyone else, rather than trying to race for the bottom by competing with the Indonesians to see who can make the cheapest tennis shoe. Even if you "win", what's it worth? Not much.

What people like you can never respond to is the unfair situation where Americans are forced to compete with rules and restrictions and taxes that those outside the country do not.

Of course I can - what exactly do you think things like WTO are for? To level the playing field, of course. Look at the record of WTO decisions - the US is by far the most active player in terms of bringing disputes to the WTO, and the US wins far more cases than it loses. And every time the US wins a trade dispute in front of the WTO, that's another door opened for American business.

As long as our society demands that there is restrictions on the govt and our freedoms (such as no slavery or no toxic waste in the rivers) then we will not be on equal standing with societies like communist china who can disregard these things.

The Chinese will find out that membership in WTO is a poison pill for them, although by the time they realize it, it'll be too late. They can't beat us without becoming us. And in the end, we win no matter what.

"For example, at least (and this is very conservative) $25 BILLION is drained off the U.S. economy each year to Mexico by immigrant labor exporting revenue to that country."

So what,
after reading every post on this thread, my eyes have been opened, there is a new dynamic at work here, there is a new economy, a new economy that doesn't need those stupid ass menial jobs.
See, in the new economy everyone is an executive or a pencil pushing geek. No need to wear those dungarees, break out the Armani, you're an insurance salesman now.
Obviously your failure to see the benefits of the new economy is because you are not with the swing.
Get rid of those antiquated ideas my friend, the smart people have taken over, don't fight it, go with the flow.
You'll look great in a three piece suit.

The same thing I hear being said about China today is the same thing that was said about Japan in the 1970's and the 1980's.

Japan didn't overtake us then and China probably Won't now.

The problem with China or anyother country overtaking us is yeah they got cheap labor now but as these manufacturing jobs increase the standard of living there the people there start demanding the same standard living as us so the cost of doing buisness there including wages and governmental services and the taxes to pay for them rises as well putting them back on par with America and eventually in one form or another the jobs that were initially lost in America Return. (The Auto industry is a good example)

As long as GW & the Republicans gives us real tax cuts, Stops these crazy lawyers and keeps the EPA & OSHA in line we will be fine.

Even with our crappy educational system Americans are still the most creative people in world while the rest of the world the people are mindless workerbees. We are the ones who invent/discover everything and we will continue to do so.

Actually if anybody is going to overtake us it will be Russia once they get their act together.

But crippling national industrial capacity and then not having it during times of national crisis (e.g., war) is a doomed policy that will come back to haunt America in the worst possible way.

Even Adam Smith was prepared to make exceptions for industries truly vital to national security, and so am I. But like him, I draw that distinction very narrowly. If you are feeding the military with products that cannot be produced domestically by someone else, you should have an exception to protect you. By that standard, the people who make tanks have nothing to fear - we shouldn't outsource our tank manufacturing, or a host of other things.

But each claim should be examined on a case by case basis, and by that standard, things like textiles and tennis shoes and single-use cameras are simply not vital to national security in the way that artillery shells are. And thus, they have no claim to special protection from overseas competition. Suppose the Indonesians come to make every tennis shoe that's sold in this country, and the Guatemalans come to make every cotton shirt - what's the worst that could possibly happen in terms of national security?

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