Ed Huntress wrote:


But don't think that US manufacturing is leaving. What's "left" is the jobs.
The dollar volume of US manufacturing continues to climb (you know how to
find the graphs and tables from the St. Louis Fed and others), and our
exports are substantial -- $1.29 trillion in exported goods, versus $1.98 in
imported goods in 2010. Our manufacturing has narrowed to the higher end and
to later stages of assembly, but the total quantity of it is greater than
ever.

I agree, What has left are the jobs - so far.
But that is really a death knell for manufacturing.
it has left the nation's blue collar males adrift
The social consequences are already producing economic
consequences and there will be more down the line
The best engineers used to come from the
brightest children of blue collar workers.
What kind of engineer do you think you will get from
the children of accountants?

The "narrowed to the higher end" manufacturing has been
cherry picking from a large over hang of skilled workers
but that is only a temporary luxury.
In the future there will be no pool of skilled workers to
cherry pick.
Nor will there be a pool of workers to call on
when the balances shift and
the rest of the world is no longer as interested in
trading IOU's for goods
(yeah I know you think it hasn't happened in 30 years
so that means it can't ever happen)



The key is that manufacturing has had productivity improvements at a rate
close to twice that of the US economy as a whole for over 20 years; around
4% annually.

A lot of that is smoke and mirrors.
Accounting tricks really.
I know two trained engineers that are working
as tempo's and there are thousands of less skilled workers that
doing manufacturing work as temporary employees
Why?
The whole purpose is to make it look like the
company is squeezing much more work out of its employees
since there is so much work being done with so little payroll.


It's eaten into the manufacturing jobs, and those that remain
require much more education than they used to. So it is a serious economic
problem but most of it is the result of a combination of productivity
improvements and competition from low-wage countries for the lower-end work,
especially consumer products.

US manufacturing jobs are taxed at 15%-30%.
Whereas the labor component of goods made abroad are often taxed at 0%
That is a huge cost dis-advantage to US manufacturing labor

-jim





This is a structural issue and no amount of
wishful thinking will change it.

--
Ed Huntress