Ed Huntress wrote:

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.

No, most of it is real, Jim. I've been reporting on it since 1974, and I've
watched it happen before my eyes.

Well good. If you are the expert then tell me how
many of the workers out on floor in a typical manufacturing facility
are employees working for temp agencies?
And we are not talking just temporary employees.
Many of the employees in manufacturing from temp agencies
work the same job at the same facility for years.

And how many employees used to have jobs that are now
out-sourced to private companies?
How much of the work that used to be done by employees
of the manufacturer is now out-sourced to private contractors?
Everything from accountants, engineers, secretaries, custodians,
maintenance, food service employees used to be counted as
manufacturing jobs. The workers are still there - they just
aren't counted as part of the workforce any more.

I have been in manufacturing facilities where 3/4 of the
workers in that facility are not on the company payroll.



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%

I'm not following you. WHO are you saying is taxed at 15% - 30%? Individual
workers? If so, that's true, but where are they taxed at 0%?

Most places in the world the lower skilled wages have no tax. Even in
Canada
they have progressive taxation so the lowest wage jobs are taxed at
something
like 3% for a full time employee
In the US it starts at 15% no matter how little the worker makes
It is no wonder that products that involve some low paying jobs
are disappearing.



--
Ed Huntress

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