October 6, 2007
The U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics reported that the U.S. manufacturing sector lost 18,000 jobs in September 2007. With these job losses, total employment in U.S. manufacturing fell to 13,983,000. This marks the first time since June 1950 (57 years) that fewer than 14 million persons have been employed by U.S. manufacturing.

Since that time, the U.S. population has doubled from 150 million to 303 million – including a 54 million consumer (person) gain since 1990. U.S. GDP in real terms has grown by approximately 550 percent since 1950, and has grown by more than 50 percent since 1992.

“This is a black day for U.S. manufacturing. Even with productivity gains, U.S. manufacturing should be adding millions of jobs, not losing them, because of substantial U.S. growth in population, GDP and demand for manufactured goods," said American Manufacturing Trade Action Coalition (AMTAC) Executive Director Auggie Tantillo. “The manufacturing employment numbers are painful sign of just how much market share U.S. manufacturing has lost to imports,” he continued.

Seasonally adjusted U.S. manufacturing employment peaked at 19,553,000 in June 1979. By January 2001, it had fallen to 17,105,000. With today’s total at less than 14 million, 3.122 million U.S. manufacturing jobs have been lost in the last six years and nine months.

As the United States has shed more than 3 million middle-class manufacturing jobs since January 2001, it has run a cumulative tradedeficit in Manufactured Goods in excess of $3 trillion. U.S. trade deficit is on track to hit approximately $725 billion in 2007, with imports of Manufactured Goods projected to account for more than $540 billion of that total. The U.S. trade deficit in Manufactured Goods with China alone is expected to exceed $270 billion in 2007.
“The tidal wave of imports, often heavily subsidized, flooding the American market is responsible for most of the job losses. In recent years, China has been the biggest problem,” said Tantillo.

“U.S. demand for manufactured goods has skyrocketed, but U.S. products have been pushed off of retail shelves by a virtual limitless flow of foreign goods that are often produced under harsh labor coditions with reckless disregard for the environment.” Tantillo added.

While U.S. demand for Durable Goods and Non-Durable Goods has exploded by 134.5 and 46.9 percent respectively between 1993 and 2005, U.S. production failed to keep pace. U.S. production of Durable Goods grew by 68.2 percent and Non-Durable Goods grew by just 18.2 percent during the timeframe mentioned above.

As a result, U.S. domestic manufacturing only captured 50.7 percent of growth in demand for Durable Goods and a paltry 38.8 percent of growth in demand for Non-Durable Goods between 1993 and 2005. With some growth in exports – including bounce-back outsourcing to Mexico – U.S. domestic production growth covered less than half of domestic demand growth.

“It is imperative for Congress to level the playing field for U.S. manufacturers. Expeditiously passing legislation that would address the massive disadvantage to U.S. producers caused by foreign value-added (VAT) taxes and manipulated currencies would be far more productive instead of trying to move flawed patent legislation and deficit-hiking free trade agreements,” Tantillo declared.

This is not good for the country, we are going from good paying manufacturing jobs to low paying service jobs and the cost of everything keeps rising.

PRESIDENT RONALD REAGAN IS NOT PLEASED. HE IS INFACT ROLLING OVER IN HIS GRAVE.

Taylor wrote:PRESIDENT RONALD REAGAN IS NOT PLEASED. HE IS INFACT ROLLING OVER IN HIS GRAVE.

I'm pretty sure he is rolling over in his grave  with these facts. At one time the US would go to war over slave wages. (our own civil war)


Real World Slave Wages

People were quite surprised a couple of years ago to discover that Kathy Gifford's clothing line was made by slave wages. The world was appalled that Gifford, almost a household name (and her football husband's name, too), was making money off her clothing line from clothes made by slave labor. People in Latin America were paid a pittance to make that clothing, for which she received a sizeable profit.

At the same time people learned that the Gap store was selling shirts made in Latin America (El Salvador) for around $25.00. Again, the world was enraged because a teenage girl was paid $.16 to make the shirt.

Young workers in maquiladoras have no freedom, no opportunity to exercise creativity, are not allowed to speak or to go to the bathroom, let alone use their inventiveness and other God-given gifts.

The great American way responds to slave wages by simply saying that you must buy your clothing from other stores: Sears, J.C. Penny, Walmart, etc., etc., that don't use slave wages. But then it was discovered that this clothing was made by slave wages, also-in fact, it appears that most clothing purchased anywhere is made by slaves.

This creates quite a dilemma: How can we buy clothes? Or worse yet, how can Catholic business people sell clothing without participating in slavery? That would certainly be immoral. Would pastors refuse the Eucharist to those who have stock in slave labor companies?

Our first orientation to slave wages began some years ago as immigrants told us their reason for coming to the United States. They had been working in Honduras in First World (Europe, U.S.A., Korea) factories and were paid $.37 cents an hour- about $14.00 per week, ironically, what the average manufacturing job paid per hour in the United States.

The immigrants responded that on this salary they could survive if they only bought food and had nothing for rent, or they could pay rent and have nothing to eat. Don't mention clothing or medication. A further irony: these immigrants to the United States were accused of being greedy people for migrating by the very same people who were creating wealth for themselves through paying slave wages.


Child Slavery

The most significant and undereported trend in the global market is the proliferation of child labor (Rourke, A Conscience as Large as the World, p. 186). As the multinational corporations expand through subcontracting arrangements, so does the enslavement of children. The Antislavery Society estimates that there are close to 200 million child laborers producing goods for the world economy. A recent study of Australian imports showed that sixty items from food products to clothing involved the use of child labor.

Frankly, the editors can't believe that there are three-year-olds working in sweat shops, but this is what the reports say.


Female Slaves

Many young women have become enslaved in the global market, assisting in the manufacturing of very respectable products. As the increasing separation between service and profit continued to expand, plants licensed by Nike, Inc., which makes tennis shoes, paid an average female worker in Indonesia approximately $0.82 per day in the 1990's. The shoes were made for less than $6.00 and sold for $75 to $135 in the United States. From its profits Nike paid Michael Jordan of basketball fame $20 million-more than the wages paid to all the young women whomade the shoes (Rourke, p. 187).


http://www.cjd.org/paper/wealth2.html

More Robots! That's what we need to compete with slave wages!

TheIndependent wrote:More Robots! That's what we need to compete with slave wages!

YES! robots.  robots with artificial intelligence & guns.


sorry, I've been watching Terminator movies on TBS lately.

Seriously, though, losing manufacturing jobs is not necessarily, by itself, a horrible thing.  The U.S. economy has been shifting to a mostly service economy for decades.  

But, the rapidity of these losses, and the fact that they're NOT caused by a natural economic evolution is a real problem.  The Democrat solution, of course, is more regulation, more tax, and - in the case of Hillary Clinton - actual theft of profits.   That ought to solve the problem, don't you think?

Eyas you contradict yourself. First you say that the U.S. economy has been shifting to a service economy then you say that losing manufacturing jobs is not caused by a natural economic evolution. If shifting from a manufacturing economy to a service or information based economy not an evolution then I don't know what is. The fact that the U.S. is losing manufacturing jobs does not mean we are producing less. The dollar value of the products (in inflation adjusted terms) is higher now then ever before and we are doing it with less people!! That means our factories are more efficient, which is a good thing. It takes less people now to make a car now then it did 30 years ago.

Back in the 1920's carriage manufacturers went out of business because of the car. Was it terrible they lost their jobs? Yeah for them, however society has been much better off with the car. The death of the factory in this country has lead to the information age where everything is automated and required more education now than it did in the past. Today you need a college or technical college degree to get a decent job. That's not a bad thing. The TERRIBLE thing is the schools in this country are not producing people that can read, write and do math properly.  That is way if we do not start getting our act straight in this country we will start falling farther behind the rest of the world.

EvilHomer wrote:Eyas you contradict yourself. First you say that the U.S. economy has been shifting to a service economy then you say that losing manufacturing jobs is not caused by a natural economic evolution. If shifting from a manufacturing economy to a service or information based economy not an evolution then I don't know what is.

Yeah, I re-read my post & it wasn't too clear.

What I meant was that losses of manufacturing jobs that are due to normal economic evolution are not necessarily a bad thing.

However, in recent years, the losses in manufacturing jobs haven't been the result of normal economic evolution.  Instead, the U.S. is now losing manufacturing jobs (and general manufacturing capacity) overseas because operating in the U.S. has become cost prohibitive -- mostly because of government regulation and taxation.  This is not normal economic evolution, it's just bad economic policy.

I was trying to make the comparison between a decline in manufacturing caused by a shift to services, greater manufacturing efficiency, etc.; versus a decline that is attributable to Federal regulation and policies which drive manufacturing overseas.  One is good, the other is bad.