It labor day in the United States and one of the things that led to the election results is the weakness in our manufacturing sector in traditional areas of the country. The reasons for the weakness are mostly technological but it also does involve some foreign outsourcing.
Of course any job such as manufacturing has a multiplier effect so the decreases you see during the recession would be pretty dramatic. Further the recovery isn't necessarily taking place in the areas hit hardest as outdated plants are shuttered and new manufacturing is moved to where the talent or cheap labor is.
Labor in this country is simply not the force it once was and to view it using a 1950s-1960s filter is simply going to distort the facts.
Manufacturing will of course always exist, but the number of people needed on the manufacturing floor is still decreasing as engineering finds more and more ways to automate the factories
It was the trend that was most noticeable to me over the last 40 years, as we moved from a factory environment where everything possible was controlled under one roof to one where the ultimate supplier is more of an assembler in many cases.
Its the other factor that makes even these fairly pessimistic numbers even worse as the jobs that do remain are frequently outsourced to suppliers who pay less and offer less benefits.
It is also one of the reasons Unions have so much trouble, when multiple suppliers are bidding to get a job, one paying slightly higher rates is at a disadvantage.
However it is labor day and we do see some uptick in Manufacturing so lets not be too gloomy.
Happy Labor Day!
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