Promise to Restore Blue Collar Jobs Calls for Creativity
In presidential campaign rhetoric this fall, issues facing blue-collar workers got more than a mention. Both candidates decried the disappearance of good-paying manufacturing jobs. President-elect Donald Trump promised he would restore America’s manufacturing base to its former glory.
But keeping this promise will be difficult, as Mark Muro, a senior fellow at the Brookings Institution, recently argued. That’s because American workers may be struggling, but American factories are not.
Over the past 35 years, the United States shed about 7 million manufacturing jobs. And some industries, such as textiles and apparel, have all but disappeared. Yet American factories actually produce more than they ever have, and at a lower cost. Manufacturing accounts for more than a third of U.S. economic output, making it the largest sector of the economy. From that perspective, it’s hard to argue that American manufacturing today is anything but a success.
The fortunes of factories themselves and of manufacturing workers have diverged. U.S. factories now manufacture twice as much as they did in 1984, with one-third fewer workers, according to the Federal Reserve.
Technology, and automation specifically, allows manufacturers to make more than ever before.
The economics are unavoidable and irreversible. Although a human welder may earn $25 an hour, a robot welder costs around $8 an hour over a five-year period, according to estimates from the Boston Consulting Group. The group projects that the cost could fall to as little as $2 an hour within 15 years.
“More generally, the ‘job intensity’ of America’s manufacturing industries—and especially its best-paying advanced ones—is only going to decline,” Muro writes. “In 1980 it took 25 jobs to generate $1 million in manufacturing output in the U.S. Today it takes five jobs.”
Given this reality, bringing back manufacturing to American shores may not be a total solution to restoring good blue-collar jobs.
Source: The Washington Post