"People who decry this always strike me as a little odd. Their assumption seems to be that 'real' jobs, 'good' jobs, and 'real' economic growth involve having people sit at an assembly line all day. I for one would consider such a job to be like prison, and I'm glad to live in a world where fewer and fewer people have to work at manufacturing jobs."

I suspect if you and I were lucky to scratch up a GED between us, we'd probably feel differently. Here in the Carolinas, we've watched the textile jobs that have provided many in our area with stable jobs for several generations dry up and float overseas.

Now those people who have grown accustomed to pretty good wages are faced with the prospect of looking for jobs in a service sector economy without the education to back that up. I can sit here, fat, dumb and happy at my desk at the power plant and tut tut other people's bad choices, but when the textile mill closes, and fewer and fewer industrial customers need the electricity I help produce, eventually the consequences land in MY lap.

At least that's what concerns me about loss of manufacturing jobs.

umm... was my comment deleted? or did i just not post it properly. if the latter, then silly me.

Well actually, Mike, I took five years to get out of High School, with a GPA of about 2.0, and spent the next 18 years of my life without any degree. I'm now a 37 year old who finally decided to go back to college.

Manufacturing jobs have been on a downward slope for decades. Automation is the main culprit, but some of it's that cheaper labor is to be found overseas. Now, we can either indulge in protectionism--which I think historically has been shown to be highly ineffective--or we can face certain realities and educate people about what the long-term trends look like.

I think it was Clinton back in '92 who rode to office telling people like those textile workers that we were in a new world, that the government could provide some assistance but that in the long run, people needed to educate themselves and advance because no one could count on those manual labor jobs being there forever.

Another brutal reality, one I've faced myself, is that sometimes you need to move if you're going to have a decent job.

I don't see any alternatives, myself. Economists call it "creative destruction," and it seems to be a pretty apt name for it.

I certainly didn't delete your comment, Max, so I don't know what happened.

Once in a while there seems to be a glitch in MT that causes posts to evaporate. It's pretty rare but it does happen. I don't know what causes it, but I think it might be when two people try to post something simultaneously.

Here in the Milwaukee area, where manufacturing has been a mainstay of the economy, we are starting to have help-wanted ads running on the radio. I love what I'm doing now, and wouldn't want to go back to running a MIG welder all day, but there are plenty of people around here for whom these jobs mean another chance for real income, and that is good for all of us.

yeahhm - probably previewed and closed the window.

Anyway. It was pretty similar to Rev. Mike, but I mentioned one of the reasons for the upturn would be the weakness of the dollar which makes exports more competitive.

We've been transitioning away from an industrial-based to an information-based economy for at least the last 25 years. People who decry this always strike me as a little odd.

I think if the laid off manafacturing workers could be magicaly transported to the golden land of the information economy, there wouldn't be all this gnashing of teeth. These are guys who are proud of their skill, decent paying manual work, who end up working some dead-end McJob - they're powerless to do anything about it and its a crushing change to their lifestyle. So its not really odd that there's a lot of political capital to be mined there.

Dean, you are possibly confusing the manufacturing sector with manufacturing jobs.

We are still doing a lot of manufacturing, but with less and less labor. This is similar to what happened in farming. Farmers are only something like 3% of the population, but produce more food now than they did when they were half the population...

I made some graphs a few months ago about manufacturing output and jobs that you might find interesting.

Dean, I'm not trying to start an argument with you, but I'm gonna have to point out what I consider to be a little egocentrism on your part.. specifically your comment "I'm glad to live in a world where fewer and fewer people have to work at manufacturing jobs."

now, I'm a graphic artist and work in a professional office environment.. I happen to agree with your previous comment that working on an assembly line would "be like prison." I've done assembly line work in what now seems like a whole different lifetime.. I personally need a work environment that requires creativity and problem-solving skills

BUT, there are a lot of people out there who are quite happy going to work every day, cranking out extruded molded parts, assembling cars, or packing cheese in shipping boxes.. my brother happens to be one of these people.. I questioned him about his career choice once, and he told me that his day job was really his downtime.. having a 'mindless' job for 40 hours a week allowed him to use his creative juices outside of work to work on things he loves.. specifically composing music

some people don't consider their job title the sole representation of their accomplishments.. and there are also people who are proud of the widgets they produce day after day in their prisons.. ironically, I remember many of these people referring to cubicles as 'cells'

Dean,

Spot on about protectionism...protectionism is a process whereby millions of people agree to pay higher prices in order that a few hundred or a few thousand get to keep jobs which can be done better and more cheaply elsewhere....

Maybe, just maybe, the Bush economic plan worked. Maybe, he isn't as stupid as you all think. Or maybe Allen Greenspan is the key behind this. But whatevers going on it good for the economy, its good for america, and it good for Bush.

Dean,

Heh, you forgot to "blame the Bush tax cuts" for this economic news. I think Andrew would have appreciated that tag.

I don't know that I'm being egocentric. I'm just pointing out that manufacturing jobs tend to be dull, repetetive motion tasks that tend to break down the human body and human spirit. I'm sure some people like such work, but every person I've known in such jobs pretty much hate going to work and wish they didn't have to.

I'm sure some people like such work. I just haven't met 'em. And even of the ones who do like it, I'll bet most of them would be miserable if they had to work at the kind of hard, grueling pace that manufacturing jobs used to require 50, 60, or 100 years ago.

You know, whatever. I'm not trying to insult people in manufacturing. If that's what some people like doing, then that's what they like doing. I'm just pointing out that it's a little odd that we romanticize assembly-line work as if it's "real" work and everything else is fake and not real. I find that doubly weird because I do think most people would find working on an aseembly line tedious, not to mention stressful on their bodies.

Yeah, some people probably like it, and I suppose some people are ill-suited to anything else, especially if they're older and have done nothing else for their whole lives. Economic adjustments are particularly tough for older workers who've done nothing but work on an assembly line most of their lives. I recognize all that. I'm just saying it's odd that we romanticize that kind of work as the only "real" work.

I've been a "service" sector employee my whole life, and don't expect to go into Manufacturing. However, that being said I understand why I think Manufacturing is romanticised. It actually seems like the individual is producing something. Service employees produce less in the way of tangible benefits, and I think in that sense we look at manufacturing and think that we get more out of it. I think Agriculture has the same kind of allure. It seems like more "real" work than service work because one has toiled with their hands and made something better as a result.

If I sue someone for you to collect on a contract, or perform transactions at a bank for a fee, all I've really done (in some minds) is increase the transaction costs for real valuable work (manufacturing and agriculture) to be done.

Note however, that I think the opposite is usually true that the service sector does make manufacturing and agriculture more productive. In many ways it reminds me of how Lenin viewed work in Anna Karenina.