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The article's most compelling point for me is the graph it links to showing all U.S. manufacturing jobs from 1939 to 2009. https://fred.stlouisfed.org/series/M

The article's most compelling point for me is the graph it links to showing all U.S. manufacturing jobs from 1939 to 2009. https://fred.stlouisfed.org/series/MANEMP https://fred.stlouisfed.org/series/MANEMP There's a big, sudden drop in 2000. It also cites a paper that says that the number of factories in the U.S. has been dropping (between 2000 and 2014)...

trhway 7y ago
>There's a big, sudden drop in 2000. actually it is in 2001. Also in 2008. The years of big busts.
- MilnerRoute 7y ago
  Yeah, but the jobs never come back after those drops. (It's almost entirely a one-way trend over the last 19 years...) There's a big three-year drop that starts in 2001. Then it goes from that steep drop to a slowly-declining drop -- before that next massive "2008" drop (which lasts through December of 2009). So it seems plausible that the loss of jobs was caused by specific events. (Whereas if it were the creep of automation, it seems like it'd be happening more gradually, factory by factory....) I guess you can argue that the economic hardship of a bust forced companies into sudden and widespread cost-cutting measures like replacing humans with robots. But another study cited in the article argues against that theory. (The article acknowledges that automation has taken some jobs, but that it's a much smaller fraction, and that latching onto that as the single explanation makes us miss the other factors -- as well as possible solutions.)
bloaf 7y ago
I don't understand the weight assigned to factory closures. If I could make all the product in one robot-factory vs 3 people-factories, I would expect 2 factory closures. I think it must be coupled with the assertion that productivity isn't rising. But I think it is very interesting to look at the graph you linked compared to the graph for non-supervisory employees: https://fred.stlouisfed.org/series/CES3000000006 https://fred.stlouisfed.org/series/CES3000000006

trhway 7y ago

>There's a big, sudden drop in 2000. actually it is in 2001. Also in 2008. The years of big busts.

MilnerRoute 7y ago
Yeah, but the jobs never come back after those drops. (It's almost entirely a one-way trend over the last 19 years...) There's a big three-year drop that starts in 2001. Then it goes from that steep drop to a slowly-declining drop -- before that next massive "2008" drop (which lasts through December of 2009). So it seems plausible that the loss of jobs was caused by specific events. (Whereas if it were the creep of automation, it seems like it'd be happening more gradually, factory by factory....) I guess you can argue that the economic hardship of a bust forced companies into sudden and widespread cost-cutting measures like replacing humans with robots. But another study cited in the article argues against that theory. (The article acknowledges that automation has taken some jobs, but that it's a much smaller fraction, and that latching onto that as the single explanation makes us miss the other factors -- as well as possible solutions.)

bloaf 7y ago

I don't understand the weight assigned to factory closures. If I could make all the product in one robot-factory vs 3 people-factories, I would expect 2 factory closures. I think it must be coupled with the assertion that productivity isn't rising. But I think it is very interesting to look at the graph you linked compared to the graph for non-supervisory employees: https://fred.stlouisfed.org/series/CES3000000006 https://fred.stlouisfed.org/series/CES3000000006