Manufacturing Jobs - Are They Worth It

Are manufacturing jobs coming back in America?

They are coming, but not really coming back. Actually, they never really left, they just changed. The manufacturing jobs that are available now and experiencing real growth are skilled, technology-heavy manufacturing jobs. Programming, instrumentation technology, quality assurance, process control, regulatory compliance and other technical jobs in manufacturing are in high demand; many go unfilled for months or years.High-paid work for high school grads with no special skills are another matter entirely. Automation does so much of that work that when new or expanded factories require some of that manual assembly or basic clerical work, they don’t need many, and they find them very quickly. The supply of unskilled and semi-skilled workers far exceeds the demand for them, so the requests are few and the pay is low.The prospects for specialized workers and managers with skills focused on the automotive industry of the 90s or construction materials manufacturing of 2006 are challenging. Even as these industries recover and grow, the technology and management methods have changed. The previously valuable and well paid middle managers and maintenance technicians from companies that have failed or relocated shouldn’t wait for jobs like those to return. They are unlikely to find similar work in 2019, unless they can transform themselves with new skills that are now in demand.Many of the products and factories that provided jobs years ago are gone forever, replaced by new products and new production technology. The great skills that were effective in those plants could be transformed and applied to new products and processes, but that requires effort, training and adaptation. You may love your ship and thrive in your work in engine maintenance, but if the ship hits an ice burg that old skill may be far less important than swimming or negotiating for a lifeboat seat. If you don’t embrace the new, in-demand skills, you will drown. The growth of manufacturing is much the same; the old skills may be more distractions than assets, unless you can transform them to match the new, high-tech demand.

Is it realistic to shift manufacturing jobs back to the U.S.?

Is it realistic to shift manufacturing jobs back to the U.S.?No.It might be realistic to shift manufacturing back to the U.S., and it might possibly (but probably not) be possible to increase the percentage of the worlds manufacturing jobs that the U.S. has. But the actual number of manufacturing jobs, both in the U.S., and in the rest of the world is going nowhere but down.A few hundred years ago, most people in the U.S. worked in agriculture. Now the agriculture sector has less than 2% of the U.S. jobs. The U.S. produces more than enough food with less than 2% of it’s labor force. And it has been for more than the last 50 years. The number of agriculture jobs in the U.S. is still slowly shrinking, and is never ever going to grow above 2% again, let alone the 50% it was hundreds of years ago.The same thing is happening with manufacturing jobs. I would not be surprised if 200 years from now less than 2% of the potential U.S. labor force is engaged in manufacturing. And that the U.S. manufactures most of what it needs within it’s own boarders. But the factories are going to be automated. Manufacturing probably will come back to the U.S. Manufacturing jobs, will continue to vanish.

When there are no more middle class manufacturing jobs, how will there be a middle class?

It is nice that you are convinced computers and robots will soon eliminate all manufacturing jobs. 180 years ago a large part of the intelligentsia were convinced that automation would soon eliminate all manufacturing jobs. Perhaps you are as correct as they were, perhaps not.There is no relationship between middle class and manufacturing. Originally, the middle class consisted of the merchants, artisans, traders, and entrepreneurs who were neither hereditary land-bound villeins (called “serfs” in Russia) nor hereditary nobles - they were the class in the middle, neither bound not entitled by birth. Sometimes called the “bourgeoisie”.Because inter-class antagonism is so much fun and gives meaning to the lives of so many people (as well as power to so many politicians), self-identification as “middle class” remains rampant.America never had a middle class simply because there were not two classes to be in the middle of. Until the end of slavery there was a lower class, but there never was an upper class.Those who use the term “middle class” invariably mean something else (middle income, prosperous people without college educations, laborers, people like me) but wish to attach the cachet of the term “middle class”.With manufacturing jobs there was no distinct middle class. Without manufacturing jobs (the U.S. is the world’s second largest manufacturer, and was the largest until about 5 years ago) there still won’t be a middle class.But as long as there are three people, each with different incomes, there will be a middle income.

Would imposing tariffs bring manufacturing jobs back to the US?

No, very unlikely to do that. Manufacturing value chains are global. Many U.S. made goods have foreign components. Slapping on tariffs will raise prices and slow imports but it will make us poorer and impede growth.We can have smarter trade policy (e.g., the tax reforms discussed above). And we can aggressively enforce our current policies to protect intellectual property, enforce rule of law, and require equal treatment from our trading partners. Tariffs are not the way to about that though.BTW, backing out of TPP was a very poor decision. The country that cheered loudest when we did that was China because TPP was setup as a bulwark against Chinese economic dominance in Asia. We harmed our own interests and those of our closest Asian allies (esp. Japan) by reneging on that in-process agreement after many countries had invested substantial political capital in making it feasible. The biggest beneficiary of our withdrawal: China. The biggest loser: Japan. The second biggest: the U.S.Oh one additional note: I hope that more manufacturing returns to the U.S., and it may do so with appropriate tax policies (and even temporarily if we make imports very expensive — though it’s a bad idea). But new manufacturing production will be capital/robot intensive and skill intensive. It’s not going to create mass employment. Manufacturing is not labor intensive any longer. And what labor intensive manufacturing exists cannot be done competitively in the U.S. There’s a reason why India will be assembling iPhones and the U.S. likely will not: those are mundane low skill jobs that could not pay a decent wage in the U.S.