Why does public discussion of job loss focus so intensely on mining and manufacturing, while virtually ignoring the big declines in some service sectors?
.. the decline of traditional retailers in the face of internet competition
.. Even as Mr. Trump was boasting about saving a few hundred jobs in manufacturing here and there, Macy’s announced plans to close 68 stores and lay off 10,000 workers.
.. Overall, department stores employ a third fewer people now than they did in 2001. That’s half a million traditional jobs gone — about eighteen times as many jobs as were lost in coal mining over the same period.
.. newspaper publishing, where employment has declined by 270,000, almost two-thirds of the work force, since 2000.
.. why aren’t promises to save service jobs as much a staple of political posturing as promises to save mining and manufacturing jobs?
.. Demagogues can tell coal miners that liberals took away their jobs with environmental regulations. They can tell industrial workers that their jobs were taken away by nasty foreigners.
.. By contrast, it’s really hard to blame either liberals or foreigners for, say, the decline of Sears.
.. it’s hard to escape the sense that manufacturing and especially mining get special consideration because, as Slate’s Jamelle Bouie points out, their workers are a lot more likely to be
male and significantly whiter.. Laid-off retail workers and local reporters are just as much victims of economic change as laid-off coal miners.
.. 75,000 Americans are fired or laid off
every working day.
And sometimes whole sectors go away as tastes or technology change.
.. I don’t want to sound unsympathetic to miners and industrial workers. Yes, their jobs matter. But all jobs matter.