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Manufacturing employment is roughly at the same place now that it was in 2020, and still substantially lower than where it would have been had the pre-pandemic
by jjk166 3y ago
Manufacturing employment is roughly at the same place now that it was in 2020, and still substantially lower than where it would have been had the pre-pandemic trend continued, and even that was nowhere near returning the US to pre-2008 levels.
https://fred.stlouisfed.org/series/MANEMP https://fred.stlouisfed.org/series/MANEMP
Construction spending is a terrible proxy for manufacturing - both because the size of a building you need isn't pegged to the value of your output (e.g. a $100 million dollar shop making aerospace components might have a tiny fraction of the footprint of a $1 million sweatshop making t-shirts), and because the cost of factory construction is determined by the cost of construction in general (i.e. if there was a real estate boom building residential buildings then you're competing with that for construction materials, equipment, labor, etc).
- simonsarris 3y agoBut also looking at FRED data we see that manufacturing sector productivity has doubled since ~1990, so it's not clear that headcount is the best proxy either. And if we look at industrial production or sector output we're still near (plateauing) all time highs https://fred.stlouisfed.org/series/IPMAN https://fred.stlouisfed.org/series/IPMAN https://fred.stlouisfed.org/series/OUTMS https://fred.stlouisfed.org/series/OUTMS But not everything is a plateau. Fabricated metal reached an all time high post covid: https://fred.stlouisfed.org/series/A32SNO https://fred.stlouisfed.org/series/A32SNO Same with semis: https://fred.stlouisfed.org/series/IPG3344S https://fred.stlouisfed.org/series/IPG3344S
- 11thEarlOfMar 3y agoWould be interesting to see 'profit per employee' over time and see how productivity plays agains employment. Ultimately, we want full employment with competitive wages. Profitability relative to employment should tell us if we're on the right track.
- jjk166 3y agoIf you want to see a renaissance of manufacturing employment, then headcount is clearly the metric that matters. The fact is that offshoring of manufacturing was a myth - the jobs never left, the industries just transformed in such a way that old, labor intensive processes were eliminated. Those jobs, and the economic prosperity they brought, are never coming back. It's merely a coincidence that at around the same time US manufacturers were computerizing their operations China was building 1920s level industrial facilities. Certainly none of the data is indicative of a sudden boom in US manufacturing in the past 2 years which could be attributable to any recent decisions or events.