Automation was reducing the number of manufacturing jobs. But "free trade" has taken away a lot of the manufacturing itself. The US as a whole can no longer make the TVs and iPhones that it consumes so many of.
There's more manufacturing than there ever has been in the United States.
It doesn't make low value-added goods like TVs, it doesn't employ a lot of people, and it's not growing as fast as other sectors, but we still manufacture more than ever before.
The “crumbling” sensation is because fewer people are employed by it and more people are employed (and earning more) in other sectors.
I was with you until the assumption that more people are earning more in other sectors. 1) they are often not the same populations of people and 2) many people are also making much less in the low-wage service economy when they would have had middle class wages in manufacturing in previous generations.
The answer to this is unions and social reforms, not more manufacturing. Manufacturing sans social reforms produce absolutely horrific conditions. Good conditions can be created by any highly productive industry (of which manufacturing isn't on a relative basis anymore) paired with social reforms.
Agree. Unfortunately, there seems to be a change in the social norms of business. Eg, pay structures that would be laughed out of the board room in previous generations are considered just the way we do business now. Same with the erosion of unions, etc.
> It doesn't make low value-added goods like TVs, it doesn't employ a lot of people, and it's not growing as fast as other sectors, but we still manufacture more than ever before.
Yes, aerospace and military tech are the biggest manufacturing industries in USA... Quite profitable these days with all these conflicts...
