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Made in America is back, leaving US factories scrambling to find workers
- jwond 4y ago> Timmons said that pay in the sector is up 5% over the course of the last year Unless this figure is adjusted for inflation, real pay has gone down.
- wellthatsawrap1 4y agoI thought those jobs were never coming back!
- JoeAltmaier 4y agoAll depends on the size of the factory. Too small - can't swallow the large pill which is automation (hiring engineers, consultants, very expensive equipment). But as soon as your payroll hits a certain figure, automation becomes cheaper and bang! small town everybody laid off. And it isn't all that big a number really.
- peteradio 4y agoI don't know if I believe this POV, from what I've seen automation is an enabler to branch into broader product base.
- tuatoru 4y agoI agree. Back in 2013 Frey and Osborne published a paper saying that 47% of US workers were threatened with unemployment from automation. Here we are nine years later, and the prime working age employment-to-population ratio is higher than it was then[1], and unemployment is under half the 2013 rate.[2] If automation is happening, it's probably increasing employment. 1. https://fred.stlouisfed.org/series/LNS12300060 https://fred.stlouisfed.org/series/LNS12300060 2. https://fred.stlouisfed.org/series/UNRATE https://fred.stlouisfed.org/series/UNRATE
- JoeAltmaier 4y agoSure if 'employment' is slinging burgers. The fact is in America at least, folks have been sliding down the occupation ladder for a generation. Somebody who used to manage a shift at a factory is now selling shoes or a security guard. An office manager becomes a McDonald's manager. And so on and so on. So sure, be comforted by employment statistic, but remember that the govt has been obsessing over them for half a century, and they don't reflect wealth or happiness. Witness the fraction of us that can't afford a house.
- tuatoru 4y agoGood points. Looking at one statistic in isolation is not going to give me a good picture. Thanks for the reminder.
- astrange 4y agoYes, automation causing unemployment is a myth that seems to be related to the "AI is going to eat us" Singularity people. Automation does the opposite, it creates employment. https://noahpinion.substack.com/p/american-workers-need-lots-and-lots https://noahpinion.substack.com/p/american-workers-need-lots...
- JoeAltmaier 4y agoNah. 'Creating jobs' means "this factory doesn't need you or have a career for you, so go work someplace menial instead to put food on the table" Its just a plain fact that manufacturing has a tiny fraction of the people employed that it did a generation or two ago. Blurring that with hopeful 'employment' statistics that ignore what kind of employment, is PollyAnna stuff.
- nyokodo 4y ago> bang! small town everybody laid off. The labor shortage is changing this calculus very rapidly. I’m not saying it can’t still happen but it’s much more likely that the factory is lacking people to fill in the wide gaps in the automation possible.
- nine_zeros 4y agoThis is probably the reason. There was a spike in retirements during covid. But more importantly, the number of retirees by year is above average too: https://www.stlouisfed.org/on-the-economy/2022/january/great-retirement-who-are-retirees https://www.stlouisfed.org/on-the-economy/2022/january/great...
- nyokodo 4y agoThe bulk of the baby boomers have just hit retirement age, we have a much smaller GenX to inadequately replace them on the experienced end, a career-stunted Millennial generation filing in the middle, and an even smaller than GenX Zoomer generation joining the lower ranks. It’s a mess, but if the Millennials catch up and have enough kids then we’ll have a light at the end of the tunnel in 20 years.
- nine_zeros 4y ago> if the Millennials catch up and have enough kids This is a big "if" and as a millenial, I don't see any signs of people wanting to have more than 1 kid. They have struggled throughout our life and don't want to sacrifice more.
- formerkrogemp 4y agoLet's not downplay the deaths due to covid and lack of immigration playing a role. It's almost never just the one thing.
- kmeisthax 4y agoAtlas - or, in this case, Xi Jinping - shrugged[0]. Chinese manufacturing went through three phases: - We can save money by moving our jobs overseas. Sure, it'll blow up our lead times and we'd have to ship goods across the Pacific thrice, but China has 3x the population of the US and the Yuan depreciation makes paying them very cheap. - We can't move our jobs back to the US! We're all tooled up in China, and everyone else followed us there. If we moved back to the US it'd blow up our lead times and we'd have to ship goods across the Pacific thrice. Plus, we literally can't hire enough people in the US, because China is buying our product just as much as they make it now. - We are moving production back to the US because our Chinese factory has been shut down for three months due to COVID and it ate through our buffer for shipping delays at the ports. Again. Yes, we will be paying far more for fewer workers, but getting goods across the Pacific is getting more and more expensive anyway and we're losing on money from not having goods to sell every other week. We are at the third step. [0] Yes I am aware of the irony of using the title of a right-libertarian political diatribe to describe the actions of a left-authoritarian dictator.
- ozborn 4y ago3rd step also includes political instability in China, an even riskier business environment, demographic headwinds along with rising wages and increased fixed automation costs everywhere. Globalization, once "inevitable", has been dead since 2019 and isn't coming back in the foreseeable future.
- nirimda 4y agoWhat happened in 2019 that caused globalisation to die? I remember the first volleys against it being the onset of the pandemic and border tightenings in Feb/Mar 2020. In 2019, COVID-19 still seemed like it might be a local phenomenon and most people outside of China had barely any idea that it existed.
- kmeisthax 4y ago2018 and 2019 saw increasing levels of tariffs apply to Chinese goods, all to force China into signing an FTA deal that never really got off the ground (and, IMHO, would never be fully adhered to by the Chinese side).
- sylware 4y agoFactory workers are often not really a thing, factory slaves would be more accurate. Use robots.
- redeeman 4y agoyou sure have a rose colored view of slavery, dont you?
- theandrewbailey 4y agoDo those slaves live on the plantation around back? In China they often do, but not in America.
- hprotagonist 4y agoNow I long for the morning that they realize Brutality and unjust laws cannot defeat us But who'll defend the workers who cannot organize When the bosses send their lackeys out to cheat us? Money speaks for money, the devil for his own Who comes to speak for the skin and the bone? What a comfort to the widow, a light to the child There is power in a union
- collegeburner 4y agoyou realize that was one of the big reasons manufacturing left in the first place? yes hmm why not go unionize right away so nobody moves back after all.
- rfrey 4y agoIf the only way to bring manufacturing back is to copy the inhumane and dehumanizing conditions of "cheap labor" economies, then we're better off not bringing it back. By outsourcing our cruelty and indifference to suffering we can have the fruits without staring at it every day.
- collegeburner 4y agowow pretending that that's the only way it would happen without unions. the conditions there are more due to lack of health and safety regs than unions.
- hprotagonist 4y agoand pray, how do you think OSHA and friends came to be ..?
- mmcgaha 4y agoThe southern states are doing manufacturing without unions and without dehumanizing anyone. This isn't a binary choice.
- 4y ago
- flockonus 4y agoBack on the first wave of "built in America" workers could afford to buy houses and have a decent standard of living with their salaries, so it was an attractive proposition. Now lower income salaries can't afford a decent living, no wonder workers are not interested in such jobs, they can't make a good living on it. It's not that the factories are being cheap (at least not in all cases), but the gov has to step in and bring real estate price under control, this is often the biggest economic gap that hurts our generation.
- Something1234 4y agoOr rent prices in general. It's absolutely obscene how expensive rent is where light rail is available near Philly. $1400+/month for a 1 bed room. I can rent cheaper inside of Philly proper.
- RobRivera 4y agosure, but then youre in Philly proper
- akira2501 4y agoSo, quality of location and buyer demand seem to have a large impact on this problem. I'm not sure how the government is going to solve this, other than making Philly nicer and thus more enticing to live in, or just forcing you to live there anyways.
- samtheprogram 4y agoIf Philly was cleaner, it would instantly compete on a much higher level. As someone who grew up in the area and loved (loves?) it I’ve never understood how dirty the city compared to other major cities. On cleanliness, it competes with New York and San Francisco but it is… Philly.
- astrange 4y ago
- textech 4y agoAre they assembling or manufacturing? If you need to import all your raw materials then you're not really manufacturing anything and I seriously doubt that anyone in this country is willing to do the dirty bad breaking work for low wages with no prospect of ever owning your home.
- yucky 4y ago>with no prospect of ever owning your home. It's strange to me how often this gets repeated as if nobody can look at Zillow and do basic math. I just checked a random suburb of Detroit (you know, since we're talking manufacturing) and in Warren MI right now there are 64 houses for less than $100k. There are hundreds more in the city of Detroit, but it's dangerous so people may not want to live there. Plus, there are a ton of factories in Warren, so what better place to look? No prospects of ever owning a home? Or no prospects of moving straight into your dream home in a hip downtown area near the coast at 26 years old? Let's call it what it is.
- guestbest 4y agoReal estate people think location is so important they will say it three times. I wonder why?
- yucky 4y ago"No prospect of ever owning a home (...in the absolute most desirable areas of the country)" In other news, I'll probably never be able to afford a Bentley, so I guess I have no prospects of ever owning a car.
- Consultant32452 4y ago"The American Dream" has also slippery sloped itself from a house with a white picket fence in a safe suburban neighborhood to if I don't become Elon Musk then there is no American Dream.
- sethammons 4y ago
- tuatoru 4y ago> “Hiring has been a problem since 2020,” Jennison said. “Hiring experienced candidates that understand the industry, and understand what they’re doing, has been very difficult.” Business owner expects to pay experienced staff $20 per hour. There is no staff shortage, there is a failure to face reality among business owners.
- sh4un 4y ago
- barsonme 4y agoWhat hourly rate do you think is fair for them to pay their employees? $20-$30/hour is ~130%-180% of the median income for Allegheny County, where the company is located. I honestly don't know what's fair for the jobs the company is hiring for. Maybe they're woefully underpaying! But at first blush it does not appear terrible. A totally not in-depth look at machinist hourly rates (in Seattle) looks fairly similar to what they're offering.
- tuatoru 4y agoThe rate at which people start applying for their jobs. Clearly, higher than "$20 - $30", which we all know means $20. Something I left out in the interests of brevity is that there was no mention of taking people off the street and paying for their training. That is the indicator of staff shortages.
- astrange 4y agoPeople are aware that every job you take or have to move for is an opportunity cost. Not just in getting paid, but also in other places you could live, or other skills you could be learning, or training you have to take. In other words, if you only get this job for a year or two and then lose it, it's not worth the risk. You'd have to be paid enough to retire on, like football players or anyone else whose career is expected to be a few years long.
- bsder 4y ago
- super_hacker2 4y ago
- legitster 4y agoThis shouldn't be a surprise. We kind of knew the favorability of offshoring was changing, and we also knew the demographics for cheap labor were also going to end. Covid just ripped the rug out a lot faster on both.
- z7 4y agoNot really a surprise when looking at the US male labor force participation rate from 1990 to 2021: https://www.statista.com/statistics/191725/us-male-civilian-labor-force-participation-rate-since-1990/ https://www.statista.com/statistics/191725/us-male-civilian-... 1990: 76.4% 2021: 67.6%
- epakai 4y agoJust in the last decade 4% more of the population has reached retirement age. Wouldn't be surprised if it makes up the bulk of the participation change since 1990. https://www.kff.org/other/state-indicator/distribution-by-age/?activeTab=graph¤tTimeframe=0&startTimeframe=11&selectedDistributions=65&print=true&selectedRows=%7B%22wrapups%22:%7B%22united-states%22:%7B%7D%7D%7D&sortModel=%7B%22colId%22:%22Location%22,%22sort%22:%22asc%22%7D https://www.kff.org/other/state-indicator/distribution-by-ag...
- ckw 4y agoThis is lfp for everyone 25-54. The key point is more like 2000, when female lfp peaks. I’d argue it’s been in secular decline since, though the severity of the decline is temporarily understated, because we are at a cyclical peak. https://fred.stlouisfed.org/series/LNS11300060 https://fred.stlouisfed.org/series/LNS11300060
- jraby3 4y agoThis discounts how many women are the main income providers today vs 30 years ago.
- astrange 4y agoIt's mostly because the population is older now. Prime age employment (25-54) in the US is quite healthy right now though.
- baybal2 4y ago
- arpowers 4y agoCNN is an unreliable place for information. Without doing further research I assume they are spinning things for democrats to make things look better than they actually are. (Same thing goes for Fox News and any other biased media)
- astrange 4y agoYou're out of date, CNN is under new ownership who are turning it into a center-right news channel.
- 1letterunixname 4y agoOh god: HN parroting CNN parroting Biden. Reminds me of tonight's Last Week Tonight episode in several ways. Big picture: Xenophobic, isolationist tendencies are leading indicators of downfall of a society's openness, net positive immigration of talent, technical superiority, and leadership in the world. China is America's factory. There is little technical know-how left in America to make things at scale, and there's no way to do it economically. 98% of the supply-chain is global. "Factory owners" might as well give it a go to get some grants and then outsource it to Africa.
- deleted 4y ago[deleted]
- nine_k 4y agoTrying to lower your dependency on an increasingly hostile and totalitarian partner is not isolationist, it's prudent. Ask Germany how well the continued dependence on Russian gas, despite the increasing authoritarianism and belligerence of Russia, has panned out.
- lazyeye 4y agoIt's funny...walk into a liquor store and shoot someone and you can get the death penalty. Advocate an economic policy that destroys the local economy in particular locations, bringing all the social ills that come with that, unemployment, societal breakdown, drug addiction and arguably 10's of thousands of deaths over time and you get, well, nothing.... It's the kind of thing that might make you end up voting for a reality television star....
- krapp 4y ago> It's the kind of thing that might make you end up voting for a reality television star.... ... who was a billionaire globalist known for his anti-labor practices and ruthless big business hyper-captialist ideals. Whose literal catchphrase was "you're fired." Who was the physical embodiment of everything you should have hated, but you either couldn't see it or didn't care because the same corporate capitalist apparatus that stole your livelihood also beat a case of Stockholm Syndrome into you.
- lazyeye 4y agoPutting aside your underlying assumption that people are stupid (not like us), given how badly some of these people have been treated it can actually make perfect sense to vote for a candidate like Trump. You achieve a couple of things, firstly you hopefully introduce some pain and unhappiness to the lives of all the right people. The smug, complacent people that have been benefiting from the current status quo and sneering at others that are not doing so well. Any discomfort you can bring into these peoples lives is well-deserved and the right thing to do. Secondly, whilst voting for any of the traditional parties is obviously wasted given the history leading to that point (they demonstrably don't give a shit), voting for an outsider at least sends a message that might just be heard for the first time in a long time. I realise that Hacker News comments section is made up largely of what Brett Stephens describes as the "protected class" so the points I'm making are not going to be appreciated but I'm just saying... https://www.nytimes.com/2022/07/21/opinion/bret-stephens-trump-voters.html https://www.nytimes.com/2022/07/21/opinion/bret-stephens-tru...
- lambdasquirrel 4y agoOne honest question I'd have about this. If we started buying stuff made in other countries because it was cheaper, then if we made that production come back to the U.S., wouldn't that mean that the prices would have to go back up? Just a thought experiment, but I'm unable to find a way around it.
- exhibitapp 4y agoYes, it's an inflationary effect for sure - deglobalization
- kaslai 4y agoYes and no. Real wages in US manufacturing have been on a steady decline for a long time now, and the cost of manufacturing goods overseas has been steadily increasing. After factoring in all associated costs with importing goods from a place like China, the difference in cost might even tip towards made in the US being cheaper in the long run. That said, a lot of countries other than China do still have cheap slave laborers that we depend on to give us cheap stuff, and we just can't compete with that using our domestic work force. Also if the local workers unionize and push wages up more towards what they would be had they kept pace with inflation, then local goods will be far more expensive. The cost of a new factory would certainly inflate a lot of short term prices too. All that said, I know a lot of people that would be willing to pay a substantial premium for well made goods that were produced domestically. Everyone has experienced just how terrible the goods we source from overseas often are, and if paying double or triple for something means that you get a useful lifespan that's 5 times longer, a lot of people are willing to pay that. There are also a lot of people that would happily pay for goods that they know for certain weren't made in a Sri Lankan sweatshop.
- swagasaurus-rex 4y agoI think what we need are product reviews that aren't so easily gamed by $$$. As it is, you don't know if the premium you pay for a product translates into quality.
- 4y ago
- oldandtired 4y agoAfter reading various comments by all sorts here, it is obvious that many do not know history nor do they understand the consequences of decisions made in the past that are now coming home to roost. Those decisions being approved by whatever political group was dominate at the time. What we see today is no different that what was seen 2 millenia ago and many times since. The problem is a "whole of society" problem and while we are tearing ourselves to shreds over "political" and "social" and "religious" differences, we all contribute to the implosion of society in general. This is the lesson from history and as long as we do not learn, we repeat again and again those same mistakes.
- addicted 4y agoThanks Biden. On a more serious note, hopefully this will lead to business leaders advocating for better government support in terms of child care and healthcare. The former because it will make more women available to the workforce (because unfortunately women are still the ones who have to run the home in the US) and the latter to shift the cost of health from employers to the govt and the people.
- camdenlock 4y ago> unfortunately women are still the ones who have to rub the home in the US They don’t HAVE to. They might do so by choice. And it may be a perfectly reasonable and fulfilling choice.
- golemiprague 4y ago
- badpun 4y agoHere: a thread about moving manufacturing to US quickly becomes another boring thread where people bitch about US real estate market.
- yrgulation 4y agoI am not american but this is good news for everyone. A stable america means stable politics meaning a stable west. Also it will likely lead to more innovation in robotics. Keep pushing.
- LatteLazy 4y agoI don't think that's necessarily true. America is much more stable than most nations and much more de-stabalising to the rest of the world...
- deleted 4y ago[deleted]
- MrMan 4y agowe need to try to get more immigrants to move here
- siruncledrew 4y ago“Made in America” comes up a lot, then when it comes time to needing Americans for the work, these factories either downsize, close, or just move to some faraway country again. It’s like the thing that gets people excited only to deflate again and sizzle out hope. Then all that’s left is another pile of rust and a trail of tax credits…