They claim we should stop talking about it because "countries are already bringing them back" and then go on to point out higher retail jobs than manufacturing jobs in the US.
this is a painfully inaccurate description of their argument. what they actually say is, "Whether or not those manufacturing jobs could have been saved, they aren’t coming back, at least not most of them. How do we know?
Because in recent years, factories have been coming back, but the jobs haven’t. Because of rising wages in China, the need for shorter supply chains and other factors, a small but growing group of companies are shifting production back to the U.S. But
the factories they build here are heavily automated, employing a small fraction of the workers they would have a generation ago."
trump's position is exactly as asinine as decrying the loss of agriculture jobs in america and talking about how he's going to do policies
x, y, and z to bring farm jobs back to america. it really wouldn't matter what his specific proposal is, and it wouldn't matter if farm jobs were the best and most high-paying jobs ever: machines do those jobs now, and that's the end of that. farm jobs are never going to supplant manufacturing or service jobs in america ever again. that's not how our economy works anymore. likewise, manufacturing isn't going to suddenly displace an industry in which 85% of americans work.
Service industries are some of the least paying jobs available and are the leading cause of stagnant wages. Manufacturing is a skilled labor; services are not.
this is absolute nonsense and just plain wrong. the service industry comprises the overwhelming majority of jobs in america, and, as you can see from the graph above, wage stagnation started much later than growth in the service industry.
the service industry is huge, and less than 20% of those jobs are in retail. transportation and warehousing, finance and insurance, health care and social assistance, legal services, repair services, accounting and bookkeeping services, architectural and engineering services, management and technical consulting services, scientific research and development services, advertising, office administrative services, motion picture and sound recording industries, telecommunications, everything having to do with the internet; these are all hugely important skilled labor jobs in the service industry, and that's just to name a few.
Companies are like water. They will go through the easiest path available. If that path is moving to Mexico, they will, if that path is moving to China, they will. If that path is moving their shit back to the US because they can't compete, they will. So this article "guys, guys, stop talking about it!!!" is the epitome of idiocy.
after you actually read the article, please tell me more about labor costs, because you're making my point for me. if firms prefer cheap labor to expensive labor, then they probably
really highly prefer automated mechanical labor to human labor, right? isn't that the most cost effective form of labor? isn't that kind of, maybe, exactly the 'idiotic' point that 538 is making?
by the way, you know what's so great about service industry jobs over manufacturing jobs?
they can't be outsourced to foreign workers. what you're saying about the service industry is just plain wrong. the desire to retool our economy to make it more like it was in the first half of the 20th century is totally beyond the pale.
http://www.nber.org/papers/w14822.pdfhttp://www.businessinsider.com/growth-of-us-services-economy-2014-9http://www.ftpress.com/articles/article.aspx?p=2095734&seqNum=3