Factory Jobs Are Booming Like It's the 1970s (nytimes.com) 98
An anonymous reader quotes a report from the New York Times: Ever since American manufacturing entered a long stretch of automation and outsourcing in the late 1970s, every recession has led to the loss of factory jobs that never returned. But the recovery from the pandemic recession has been different: American manufacturers have now added enough jobs to regain all that they shed -- and then some. The resurgence has not been driven by companies bringing back factory jobs that had moved overseas, nor by the brawny industrial sectors and regions often evoked by President Biden, former President Donald J. Trump and other champions of manufacturing. Instead, the engines in this recovery include pharmaceutical plants, craft breweries and ice-cream makers. The newly created jobs are more likely to be located in the Mountain West and the Southeast than in the classic industrial strongholds of the Great Lakes.
American manufacturers cut roughly 1.36 million jobs from February to April of 2020, as Covid-19 shut down much of the economy. As of August this year, manufacturers had added back about 1.43 million jobs, a net gain of 67,000 workers above pre pandemic levels. Data suggest that the rebound is largely a product of the unique circumstances of the pandemic recession and recovery. Covid-19 crimped global supply chains, making domestic manufacturing more attractive to some companies. Federal stimulus spending helped to power a shift in Americans' buying habits away from services like travel and restaurants and toward goods like cars and sofas, helping domestic factory production -- and with it, job growth -- to bounce back much faster than it did in the previous two recessions.
In recessions over the last half century, factories have typically laid off a greater share of workers than other employers in the economy, and they have been slower to add jobs back in recoveries. Often, companies have used those economic inflection points to accelerate their pace of outsourcing jobs to foreign countries, where wages are significantly lower, and to invest in technology that replaces human workers. [...] This time was different. Factory layoffs roughly matched those in the services sector in the depth of the pandemic recession. Economists attribute that break in the trend to many U.S. manufacturers being deemed "essential" during pandemic lockdowns, and the ensuing surge in demand for their products by Americans. Manufacturing jobs quickly rebounded in the spring of 2020, then began to climb at a much faster pace than has been typical for factory job creation in recent decades. Since June 2020, under both Mr. Trump and Mr. Biden, factories have added more than 30,000 jobs a month. "Sectors that hemorrhaged employment in recent recessions have fared much better in this recovery," reports the NYT. They include furniture makers, textile mills, paper products companies and computer equipment makers.
"Mr. Biden has pushed a variety of legislative initiatives to boost domestic manufacturing, including direct spending on infrastructure, tax credits and other subsidies for companies like battery makers and semiconductor factories, and new federal procurement requirements that benefit manufacturers located in the United States," adds the report -- all of which could help encourage factory job growth in the coming months and years.
Furthermore, the rising tensions between Washington and Beijing over trade and technology could encourage more companies to leave China for the United States, particularly cutting-edge industries like clean energy and advanced computing.
American manufacturers cut roughly 1.36 million jobs from February to April of 2020, as Covid-19 shut down much of the economy. As of August this year, manufacturers had added back about 1.43 million jobs, a net gain of 67,000 workers above pre pandemic levels. Data suggest that the rebound is largely a product of the unique circumstances of the pandemic recession and recovery. Covid-19 crimped global supply chains, making domestic manufacturing more attractive to some companies. Federal stimulus spending helped to power a shift in Americans' buying habits away from services like travel and restaurants and toward goods like cars and sofas, helping domestic factory production -- and with it, job growth -- to bounce back much faster than it did in the previous two recessions.
In recessions over the last half century, factories have typically laid off a greater share of workers than other employers in the economy, and they have been slower to add jobs back in recoveries. Often, companies have used those economic inflection points to accelerate their pace of outsourcing jobs to foreign countries, where wages are significantly lower, and to invest in technology that replaces human workers. [...] This time was different. Factory layoffs roughly matched those in the services sector in the depth of the pandemic recession. Economists attribute that break in the trend to many U.S. manufacturers being deemed "essential" during pandemic lockdowns, and the ensuing surge in demand for their products by Americans. Manufacturing jobs quickly rebounded in the spring of 2020, then began to climb at a much faster pace than has been typical for factory job creation in recent decades. Since June 2020, under both Mr. Trump and Mr. Biden, factories have added more than 30,000 jobs a month. "Sectors that hemorrhaged employment in recent recessions have fared much better in this recovery," reports the NYT. They include furniture makers, textile mills, paper products companies and computer equipment makers.
"Mr. Biden has pushed a variety of legislative initiatives to boost domestic manufacturing, including direct spending on infrastructure, tax credits and other subsidies for companies like battery makers and semiconductor factories, and new federal procurement requirements that benefit manufacturers located in the United States," adds the report -- all of which could help encourage factory job growth in the coming months and years.
Furthermore, the rising tensions between Washington and Beijing over trade and technology could encourage more companies to leave China for the United States, particularly cutting-edge industries like clean energy and advanced computing.
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Good. They actually have a reason to use missiles instead of ground troops. The US over-reliance on them has been devastating to civilians, and very expensive indeed in our conflicts for the last few wars we've completely lost.
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and very expensive indeed in our conflicts for the last few wars we've completely lost.
What war exactly was that where the US "completely lost"?
I hadn't heard of any wars the US has ever "completely lost", you could argue that we lost in Korea and Vietnam, but a complete loss would be that the country the US was at war with completely won, and since the US still exists, I am not thinking of any war that applies to.
Perhaps you aren't in the US, and so your country has completely lost some wars and been completely overrun by the enemy resulting in the overthrow of your government?
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"Loss" could mean "failure to achieve vague objectives."
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Even that wouldn't be true of any recent war, as Iraq, the objective was to overthrow Saddam, which was achieved quickly, and Afghanistan was to overthrow the Taliban, which happened quickly. The Taliban retook Afghanistan when we left, but that was because Biden delayed the pull out from May (before fighting season) to Sept (in the middle of fighting season), and because the Afghan government pretty much didn't bother to try to stop the Taliban from taking over. You have to go back to Vietnam to find a w
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Guerrilla wars are not wone by planting a flag in the capital. being forcibly chased out by guerrilla warfare is what is happening to the Russians in Ukraine, as occurred to them in Afghanistan before the US led invasion back when we funded the Taliban because they fought the right enemies. The US evacuations from Afghanistan and Iraq were shameful disgrace, though early battles were won easily with massive technology and personnel who were withdrawn before the conquests were completed. Yes, I refer to thos
Europe's loss is our gain (Score:5, Informative)
The Ukraine war has resulted in extremely high energy prices in Europe which puts a damper on manufacturing there; in addition to that China is still hamstringing itself with COVID restrictions. Enjoy it while it lasts, factory workers, it probably won't last long. Most likely the recession will deepen and demand will drop off as well, but even if that doesn't happen, China will eventually get its act together. Maybe even Europe too.
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That's the plan. America boomed when they first started extracting resources from the new world and again when Europe was flattened in WW2.
If TPTB can spark another European war it will give America back the edge it had in the 50s and 60s.
Immigration crisis: open the borders ... Basically put enough pressure on Europe until it explodes from the inside out.
Energy crisis: turn off nuclear power, coal and gas, create an energy crisis
Financial crisis: kill the currency
Re: Europe's loss is our gain (Score:1)
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I was marked Troll for telling the truth. I wonder what Slashot would mark the people responsible for bombing Nordstream 5 as?
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Why the hell aren't we in the US, mining and selling all the natural gas we have here to our allies???
Geez, we got tons of the stuff....
Re:Europe's loss is our gain (Score:4, Informative)
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Considering what Russia's done here recently...I can't see that they would EVER AGAIN be seen as a dependable source of any sort of energy or export.
No matter the price...what country in their right mind would go back to them as a source, even when this conflict somehow ends some day?
Going forward, I can't imagine Russia would have any customers f
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You don't have the facilities for it. This shit isn't shipped via UPS. You can pull as much out of the ground as you want, without liquification or transport facilities you can't do anything other than set it on fire.
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You don't have the facilities for it.
You could have fooled me.
https://www.ferc.gov/natural-g... [ferc.gov]
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We are. Our LNG export facilities are currently maxed out and have been for some time. The problem is that building new export facilities takes a very long time, is heavily contested by environmental groups, and is an expensive process with speculative profitability that depends on the long term picture. One of the long anticipated LNG expansions was recently cancelled because of Dems blocking the permits
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Talking points. That's all it is. Boris Johnson gets dumped as PM because of specific non-political issues and immediately some stupid ass talking head (yes, that one) says it's because UK was getting too liberal. Stupid ass Texan senator can't stop talking about wokeness. There's a religious aspect here, the true believers that feel a laxness in morals (as in gays getting married as opposed to sleeping around) means that God will pass judgement. This is religious approved schadenfreude.
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Re:Europe's loss is our gain (Score:4, Informative)
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The west had been far too cozy with Putin for far too long. Like having a teenage delinquent where the parents keep thinking that having some long talks and some nice holidays will stop him from killing the neighbor's cats, it just doesn't work to coddle the bad guys and hope. "We'll invite him to the G7, he'll see how wonderful it is to be a part of the team and he'll mellow out!"
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America is also getting higher energy prices for the same reasons as Europe. Price goes up in one place then it goes up in all places. There are few sellers when seeing high prices who decide to sell low. The world economies are much more intertwined than ever.
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>China will eventually get its act together.
They will need to move away from a Zero Covid policy then. And that doesn't seem likely any time soon.
I guess "eventually" can be a long time, but the current Chinese administration is hell bent on Zero Covid.
So, after a revolution in China, they get things together?
Covid doesn't seem like it is going away, and the Chinese policy seems disastrous. Let's see how a war between a virus and a fascist government goes. I'm betting on the virus.
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...but the peace and tranquility of the 90s, 2000s, and 2010s masked that out...
It's like the two wars in Iraq, and the 20 year disaster in Afghanistan never even happened now, isn't it?
You've also completely ignored the massive shareholder value that was created by sending manufacturing to China.
The vast US corporation I work for (for example) still makes nearly $1 billion in profits every year from it's Chinese factories and I'm sure the shareholders care much what you think.
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It's like the two wars in Iraq, and the 20 year disaster in Afghanistan never even happened now, isn't it?
When more military personnel die in accidents than are killed in action, I would call those years of peace and tranquility. At least from the US's perspective, which is the context of the original post. Similar to how Russians likely view the Ukraine conflict, it is when drafts start happening that a country feels like they're in a war.
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About half of the Democrat voters, mostly the younger / less experienced half, want Biden to shut down as many businesses as possible.
[citation needed]
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Ass, My (2022) "What young people think", Journal of Ray's Ass, 56(3), DOI: 10.1002/rmass690
Re: yeah I glad Biden didn't cower (Score:1)
Citation: any post by rsilvergun, who, despite being an old fart puts a lot of work into sounding exactly like a zoomer.
What influence does COVID and Immigration have? (Score:2)
So many assholes made a big show about
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I read back in 2020 we started enforcing immigration laws a bit better, presumably to deal with COVID. Suddenly there's a massive labor shortage! I'm very glad manufacturing jobs are coming back in the USA, but part of me is also frustrated wondering why it took so long. Wouldn't we have been here long ago had we just reformed our immigration laws as well as actually enforced current immigration policy and actually fined employers who hired unauthorized workers?
Nah, that's got little to do with it. The big thing is we have laws against things like dumping chemical waste into rivers and worker protection laws. You don't have any of that in China. Our labor market can't possibly compete as long as the competition is willing to poison their own land and let their workers work to death.
If you want labor to shift back here, you need to apply tariffs to any goods that don't meet our production standards. Tax any goods coming into the country to make up for the cost savi
China's pollution laws (Score:5, Insightful)
Actually, China's pollution laws are tougher than the USA's, at least in the books. Problem is that bribery and corruption exist such that they're mostly ineffective.
What has really happened, I think, because I've been hearing about "in-sourcing" for years, is that the cost differences have changed such that building in the USA for more things is profitable again:
1. Labor rates in China have been rising, substantially, for decades, while wages in the USA mostly stagnated. This increases the costs of building in China relative to building in the USA.
2. Oil prices have been rising. This increases the costs of shipping stuff from China to the USA.
3. Ports in China and the USA are heavily burdened. This increases the costs of shipping.
4. Increasing amounts of automation reduces the benefits of making stuff in lower wage areas.
5. Not having the ~30 day lead time of having your product in shipping containers moving across the sea is a substantial capital cost saver.
6. Speaking of which, not having that 30 day lead time allows you to be more "agile" in meeting customer demand. It means that you don't have to add +30 days shipping in any predictions for demand. If demand is less than anticipated, you can cut production faster, if it is more, you can boost it faster.
7. Without the 30 days and remoteness of China, you can generally catch and fix production problems faster. If you find a defect, for example, you might be able to fix it in a day in the USA, but in China it might take a week, and you already have 30 days of defective product on the ships coming to the USA...
8. This is a very recent one: Russia's attack on Ukraine has increased the anticipated possibility of something similar with China, domestic production carries less risk, which is a vague savings, but one priced into decisions.
You add all the above up, and it becomes such that while it might still be cheaper to produce a lot of things in China, it doesn't hold true for quite as many things anymore. Ergo, stuff being built in the USA again. It's just that it's generally in highly automated factories.
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What is the connection between COVID and a labor shortage? Possibly that the US government, in the name of COVID relief, handing out large amounts of money. I personally know one person who was laid off, and was kind of lethargic about even looking for a job because the "relief" money was so good and not-working seemed very attractive. I don't have any statistical data to back up this anecdote but I imagine this is pretty widespread.
So many assholes made a big show about building a pointless border wall.
DNC is bought off by same businesses (Score:5, Insightful)
The Democrats want it because they are hoping that all the illegal immigrants will turn into voters who vote Democrat, and the big business politicians (both Democrat and Republican) are hoping for low-cost labor.
I don't know who these people are you are complaining about, who do want a wall but do not want it to be backed up with other immigration policy.
First of all the DNC has corporate interests more than voter interests. Little over half of latinos vote Democrat. Most politicians think their route to a victory is more from good funding and registering existing voters than the Latino population. If the Republicans weren't so racist towards them in the last 20 years, a lot more would vote Republican...probably moreso than Democrat. The majority that immigrate here are either conservative Christians or extremely entrepreneurial...both GOP strongholds. Latinos dislike the DNC just as much as any white person does in the same situation...they just vote DNC because they're sick of being called Rapists during presidential campaigns or the 20+ years of hostility they've seen at GOP rallies.
... "build the wall!!"...a much more fun thing to chant.
Secondly, the answer to the problem is obvious. Illegal immigration is 95%+ for economic reasons. If there were no jobs, there would barely be any immigrants, legal or illegal. Conservatives have obsessed about targeting immigrants and building walls and yet never seem to speak out against those hiring them. Why? Because the inconvenient truth is it's usually a small business owner hired by a mega business in your community or farmer hiring them. It's easy to get mad at the brown person who speaks shitty English. It's much harder to get mad at some guy who is a good friend, nice guy, and hires 20 of them...probably also has a ton in common with you and is a GOP donor...and probably does business with companies big enough to donate to both parties.
No one is chanting at MAGA rallies "Tangibly penalize employers who violate existing laws!"
Illegal immigration is relatively easy to fix. These folks aren't crossing the border to sling drugs on the corner. They're hired at the company your office or local WalMart outsources their cleaning to. They're hired as nannies or cleaners for your household or the household of your neighbors. They're hired at the farms in your region. Stop patrolling the border and check payroll records and inspect job sites...the problem will go away overnight.
Re:DNC is bought off by same businesses (Score:5, Insightful)
Well said.
I've made that very point to right wingers many times in the page. The claim is always that food prices would skyrocket if we went after farmers who employed illegal immigrants, or forced them to pay at least minimum wage.
They see absolutely nothing incompatible with wanting illegal farm labor to go unpunished and stopping illegal immigration. It's amazing, really.
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The UK committed brexicide to reduce immigration, and now there is pressure on the government to relax immigration rules because there is a big labour shortage. Some jobs, like farming, where done by migrant labour because it's seasonal and extremely hard even for the young and healthy.
On top of that wages in the UK are falling below Eastern Europe, meaning there is no economic incentive to come here. Migrant labour has to come from South Asia and other poorer countries now. At least with Eastern Europe the
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It appears this is backfiring a bit on the Dems though...
I mean, even Trump pulled in a surprisingly large number of latino votes.
Turns out immigrating Latinos and first generation ones, are pretty darned conservative by nature.
They still value family, church
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"-1, Troll"? Nope, I wasn't trolling. I wasn't looking for trouble, just giving my opinions.
I guess I should have expected to be down-moderated for having opinions like this, but I would have expected "Overrated" rather than "Troll". Oh well.
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I personally know one person who was laid off, and was kind of lethargic about even looking for a job because the "relief" money was so good and not-working seemed very attractive. I don't have any statistical data to back up this anecdote but I imagine this is pretty widespread.
There was a total of $3200 given over three payments over the span of about a year, with additional for any dependent children. Even if someone is living at poverty level with extremely cheap rent and spending very little on anything else, that's not going to go very far. Especially since they were spaced out. It's not like the government was dumping money into bank accounts that people were able to live off of long-term. And even if they got extra for having kids, they still have to take care of the kids.
The Democrats want it because they are hoping that all the illegal immigrants will turn into voters who vote Democrat
I
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There was a total of $3200 given over three payments
That was the direct Federal grants.
There was also the generous extensions to unemployment benefits from the CARES act [dol.gov].
Not applicable to the person I was mentioning, there was also mandatory forgiveness on unpaid mortgages. This saved some people, and also was great for some deadbeats.
Also, perhaps I need to spell this out: I didn't say that I either approve or disapprove of the COVID-19 relief measures. In the imaginary small-government libertarian count
Re:What influence does COVID and Immigration have? (Score:4, Interesting)
The labor shortage is caused by the fact that the baby boomers are either retiring or dying. It's not even really a labor shortage it's a shortage of people willing to take extremely low pay and very physically demanding jobs. Previously those people either took those jobs or they became homeless and now those people are moving into the jobs the baby boomers are vacating.
I'm sure the powers to be with love to flood the market with cheap immigrant labor for those low paying jobs it's difficult to justify that. There is of course migrant farm work but they've been gradually switching to using prison labor for that.
And one thing else that's reducing the number of immigrants is that our CIA has not been as successful at the stabilizing countries is it used to after they have gotten used to our tricks so the flood of refugees is substantially lower than it used to be. I'm sure there's plenty from Ukraine but the rest of Europe is happy to absorb those. And the whole world has declining birth rates so that countries that used to chase their excess population out with pogroms are now interested in keeping them.
In short, we enforced the shit out of existing laws we're just seeing less people because there's not as much poverty and violence forcing them to walk 2,000 miles to make your French fries
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And one thing else that's reducing the number of immigrants is that our CIA has not been as successful at the stabilizing ["destabilizing"?] countries is it used to after they have gotten used to our tricks so the flood of refugees is substantially lower than it used to be.
we're just seeing less people
"reducing"? "less people"?
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The statistics are bullshit.
CBP is a Federal agency. Democrats hold the House, the Senate, and the Presidency. If you think CBP is making up bogus statistics, please explain why they would do such a thing, and why the Democrats haven't done anything about it.
We are seeing a increase in Venezuelan refugees because the country's entire power grid was run off of a single hydroelectric dam and thanks to climate change
The whole country has been a disaster for over half a decade now, due to many factors [osu.edu] but you
you're talking about immigrants, not employers. (Score:2)
The labor shortage has nothing to do with immigration being enforced more or less. Barack Obama was ruthless in his enforcement of immigration laws to the point where he arrested and deported more than Trump did.
That's addressing the immigrants, not employers.
2 models: drugs and child porn. For drugs, we go after the poor people selling them, but give the buyers a slap on the wrist in most cases....hence decades of a pointless drug war. It's a joke and largely done for show.
Child Porn: We despise both those who consume and those who produce it and prosecute both to the best of our ability. Child porn is thus extremely rare. I've been offered all sorts of illegal drugs throughout my lifetime. I've never p
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If you read this comment and also some of the well-written responses, it's fair to say that there are *many* reasons for the current situation. As TFS states, there have been structural changes in the economy. Both the *type* and *location* of jobs have moved. So if you are a great waitress in Detroit, it's hard to fill an auto manufacturing job in Atlanta both b
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> If we have a shortage of workers, though, that's a double-whammy. If somebody is working at the ice cream plant for $20/hr and you hire them away for $22/hr to clean your office, well, now you have to pay more and the ice cream plant is out a worker. Hire an economic migrant (legal or otherwise) for $15/hr, you save a third of the wages and the ice cream plant is also better off.
Where did the economic migrant come from if we have a shortage of workers? Or are you saying we should import more workers t
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That is true. Sounds like the solution to that is more workplace enforcement for illegals, with higher fines for employers, and corporate death sentences for repeat offenders.
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If there is a *genuine* shortage of labor in this country (and it's hard to really say since there are so many politicians and corporate entities talking out of both sides
Unlikely (Score:5, Insightful)
Furthermore, the rising tensions between Washington and Beijing over trade and technology could encourage more companies to leave China for the United States, particularly cutting-edge industries like clean energy and advanced computing.
Manufacturing jobs aren't coming back to the US from China. They will go to India or Mexico.
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you guys can celebrate the "increased" chocolate rations if you want
Well actually, that is something I would celebrate.
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"family size" bag of M&Ms is for the whole family, for a year.
Re: What (Score:2)
Is that really an increase?
Uh... 1984 reference (Score:3)
It looks like you missed the reference. [goodreads.com]
Basically, in the book 1984, the propaganda department first advertised that the chocolate ration had been reduced to 20 grams a week, then the next day advertised that it had been increased to 20 grams a week. Supposedly the population bought this, acting like both statements were true, despite the ration not actually changing.
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Thanks.
Re:Unlikely (Score:4, Interesting)
Furthermore, the rising tensions between Washington and Beijing over trade and technology could encourage more companies to leave China for the United States, particularly cutting-edge industries like clean energy and advanced computing.
Manufacturing jobs aren't coming back to the US from China. They will go to India or Mexico.
Vietnam or any other developing nation.
China already imports a lot of it's goods from even poorer nations like Bangladesh, it's why they've been sending medical ships to East Africa for the last 20 years... Meet your new overlords.
China has known that they will have a burgeoning middle class before too long, this is a bit of a problem as the middle class have more free time thus demand more, things like luxuries, liberties and a say in their own governance. The last part is particularly difficult for China as the government is built to rule a nation of peasants, this is why China came up with things like Social Credit. A means to destitute someone without actually doing anything, so that the middle classes stay compliant or don't stay in the middle classes.
What a horrible headline (Score:1)
"booming like the 1970s" ...when jobs were collapsing. Huh?
The NYT editors strike again. https://www.thebiglead.com/pos... [thebiglead.com]
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> "booming like the 1970s" ...when jobs were collapsing. Huh?
Maybe they were thinking of inflation?
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NYT editors are turning into (to put it kindly) lazy slobs instead of journalists. That like the same trend which destroyed the old Slashdot does not affect revenues so nothing will change.
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Those factory jobs were replaced with better jobs. Whether or not that's good for the security of a country is another discussion altogether, but from a jobs perspective, crying about our outsourcing of manufacturing is positively eye-rolling.
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Yeah, I had to read the headline like three times to ensure I wasn't missing something
Anyway, Johnny Paycheck had something to say about those 'booming' careers back then...
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Really a recession? (Score:1)
So yeah, I think this meets the definition of a recession (not an economics major). However I think most recessions are caused by a serious drop in demand, so production has to be cut back to avoid over supply. This seems to be more like demand is just fine, possibly even excessive thanks to all the cash the government threw into the economy, but instead COVID shredding the idea of JIT manufacturing resulted in serious supply chain issues. So if the supply chain could keep up, it seems like we would not
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There isn't a lack of purchasing power. The gears of commerce are seriously fucked up by a near universal inability to meet demand.
My particular industry is still growing gangbusters.
But then again, we don't deal in manufactured hardware. Of course, in cases where we need manufactured hardware, we've had to get very creative to get our hands on equivalents, which had we failed, absolutely would have caused a decrease in our growth (direct
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I wonder if this will lead to a serious rethinking of JIT...I doubt they'll do away with it entirely, BUT, they should definitely moderate it and keep some storage/stock. They should analyze what parts/pieces have been affected now and mitigate this in the future by keeping some
Other option (listed below) (Score:3)
Seriously? No “yeah, and they’re paying the same wage as 1970s too” response?
What is it, SARCASM four day week?
Sign of the times. (Score:4)
U.S. has never recovered from NAFTA treaty (Score:1)
Re: U.S. has never recovered from NAFTA treaty (Score:1)
Strong USD will take care of this boom (Score:1)
It's bigger than Biden (Score:5, Interesting)
"Mr. Biden has pushed a variety of legislative initiatives to boost domestic manufacturing"
Yes, CERTAINLY this has nothing to do with Trump initiating punitive tariffs on China. /rollseyes
A long span of global peace, cheap transportation at scale, cheap $ meant that pointy-headed MBAs for decades now could get fat bonuses by closing US plants and outsourcing mfg to China to save $0.0005 per widget because the moron C-suite execs went to the same school and completely forgot that every system has to be fault-tolerant.
But fault-tolerance generally costs money and efficiency. When fault-tolerance is seen to be 'fat that can be trimmed', when shit goes sideways, the system fails. We are still largely in a failure-state logistically because all of those deferred investments, deferred expenses, etc suddenly compounded into catastrophe.
The ONLY way out of this is a long view, and that means accepting higher domestic (or Mexican) mfg in exchange for a recognized resilience to international shocks that can't be controlled out.
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Trump's punitive tariffs are not at all related to any of the industries being discussed and actively harmed local manufacturing due to the way it affected the USA supply chain. So you're absolutely right, just leave the /s off the post next time.
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The premise of the OP is that there is a resurgence of US industrial jobs.
The later-Trump-years punitive Chinese tariffs were the beginning of both a US government admission, and US businesses' recognition that while China was a cheap place to manufacture/source, their overall policies and goals were inimical to US strategic and commercial interests in the short, medium, and longest terms.
An irrefutable consequence of that is the long term relocation (and diversion) of China-outsourcing projects closer to h
Fake news (Score:2)
Pay attention to WHAT factory jobs: beer and ice cream factories. Meanwhile, the stuff that we need to beat Russia and China, not so much. This NYT article is just NYT trying to help the Democrats in the midterms, and nothing more.