Why Are Politicians So Obsessed With Manufacturing?
From an economic perspective, however, there can be no revival of American manufacturing, because there has been no collapse. Because of automation, there are far fewer jobs in factories. But the value of stuff made in America reached a record high in the first quarter of 2016, even after adjusting for inflation. The present moment, in other words, is the most productive in the nation’s history.
.. One of Trump’s keynote proposals is to encourage domestic production by taxing imports — an idea more likely to cause a recession than a manufacturing revival.
.. According to the Bureau of Labor Statistics, there were 64,000 steelworkers in America last year, and 820,000 home health aides — more than double the population of Pittsburgh. Next year, there will be fewer steelworkers and still more home health aides, as baby boomers fade into old age. Soon, we will be living in the United States of Home Health Aides, yet the candidates keep talking about steelworkers. Many home health aides live close to the poverty line: Average annual wages were just $22,870 last year. If both parties are willing to meddle with the marketplace in order to help one sector, why not do the same for jobs that currently exist?
.. The manufacturing boom of the postwar years was an oddity, and there will be no repeat of the concatenation that made it happen: The backlog of innovations stored up during the Great Depression and World War II; the devastation of other industrial powers, Germany in particular, which gave the United States a competitive edge.
.. The old working class still controls the megaphone of the labor movement, in part because unions have struggled to organize service workers. Manufacturing was, logistically speaking, easier to organize. There were lots of workers at each factory, and most knew one another. Service work is more dispersed and done in smaller crews.
.. The Harvard economist Lawrence H. Summers estimates that by midcentury, one-third of men in their prime working years, between the ages of 25 and 54, will not be working.