Check this out:
From Robert Samuelson's column in the Washington Post a few weeks ago:
From 1998 to 2007, total non-farm payroll employment [in the U.S.] rose 12
million, and unemployment averaged only 4.9 percent -- despite the 4 million
lost factory jobs. In that period, U.S. manufacturing output rose 22 percent.
Turns out we have employed fewer people in manufacturing but manufacturing output is up. This is because the US has become more efficient with labor some we can be more competitive globally. Is B Hussein saying he wants US industry to be less competitive and more inefficient? Or maybe he wants to lower wages for everyone in the manufacturing sector so more people can be employed?
In Tuesday's USA Today on the steel industry:
A string of bankruptcy reorganizations of the USA's most storied steelmakers leading up to 2000 allowed the industry to mend itself, Halpert says. Some of the biggest changes occurred in 2002, when financier Wilbur Ross began forming International Steel Group. Amid a steel depression, ISG gradually bought some of the nation's top steel mills, starting with LTV and then Bethlehem Steel, Weirton Steel and Georgetown Steel.
Labor contracts were amended. Costs were driven down. And mills were modernized. Now, across the nation's steel industry, 160,000 employees produce 110 million tons of steel a year, says the American Iron and Steel Institute. In 1970, it took 500,000workers to make 91 million tons. "The industry is better," Halpert says. Such efficiencies have made producing steel more profitable, he says.
So today we are producing more with less in virtually all parts of the manufacturing economy. That is a good thing. Yes jobs were lost, but that means we have more resources to deploy in other industry or service sectors. Unemployment is still low (less than 5%) so there are places in
the economy for the displaced workers to find work. These opportunities might not be in Michigan, but they are out there.
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