8 ms·

Do you have a source for this? In the past when I've been told this, the statistics referenced where based on whether a company was classified as being in in th

by pavon 2y ago

Do you have a source for this? In the past when I've been told this, the statistics referenced where based on whether a company was classified as being in in the manufacturing sector, not based on which jobs were classified as manufacturing. This included companies that were classified that way due to historical inertia, or based on their global industry but actually had little to no manufacturing in the US. Based on that I have a hard time knowing what to believe, and would love to be pointed to more accurate information.

parhamn 2y ago
If you go by manufacturing jobs, BLS seems to have the data going back to 1939. Peaks at 18.4m jobs in 1969. Currently at about 12.9m. N.B. the current U.S. population is 1.6x the population of 1969. https://data.bls.gov/timeseries/CES3000000001 https://data.bls.gov/timeseries/CES3000000001
- macleginn 2y ago
  Average productivity per manufacturing worker in the US grew on average by 3% per year in the 1950–1980s and 4% per year in 1990s (https://www.bls.gov/opub/mlr/2002/06/art4full.pdf https://www.bls.gov/opub/mlr/2002/06/art4full.pdf), i.e. its current output is comparable with that of ~50m people working in 1969, so a 30% decrease in total manufacturing employment was probably well compensated for (putting aside the social welfare point of view).
speleding 2y ago
> Do you have a source for this? There are reams of economic literature trying to estimate whether government intervention in the market was a good idea. Most of the time it doesn't turn out great. So the parent's suggestion "probably won't be a win for economic output" is a pretty safe bet. Often governments will use "security" as an argument to keep steel, shipbuilding, etc, in the country. That argument is not really possible to evaluate on economic grounds.
- corimaith 2y ago
  Well I do think the security argument does stand, you don't want to outsource navy carrier construction to China for example. Just don't expect a thriving economy to be built around it.
- woodruffw 2y ago
  Does “government intervention” include subsidies and R&D, in your account? I can think of more than a few industry segments (aerospace, biotech, etc.) that likely wouldn’t exist or be nearly as lucrative as they currently are without the extensive government intervention that helped build them.
  - cogman10 2y ago
    And continues to make. The NHS, for example, is a major source of funding for research into new drugs and treatments. mRNA vaccines came from decades of NHS funded research that the manufacturers are just now picking up and running with. It should also be pointed out that economic goodness is not and should not be the be-all end-all reason for government spending. Governments building parks, for example, is a social good with little economic value (or at very least hard to quantify benefits). In the case of things like medicine, government spending there has a social good of limiting communicable disease which is more important than how much money a drug company can make off a drug. For something like TSMC putting plants in the US, even if it's somewhat economically disadvantageous we are still talking about bringing onshore more jobs and training for US citizens which will generally increase our capabilities here and the satisfaction of those employees. Trying to get onshore development of electronics, the government basically has 2 levers to pull, either subsidizing building new manufacturing or applying tariffs to incoming tech goods. One of those levers has the negative consequence of raising prices on tech goods for everyone while we wait for manufacturing to build out.
    - lostlogin 2y ago
      > the government basically has 2 levers to pull That’s simplistic and assumes a baseline where the relationship with the government starts at zero. The company pays taxes. There can be negotiations over the tax rate, which is not a subsidy so much as a ‘tax you less’ type arrangement. This can happen at multiple levels for a company like Apple, even beyond the state/federal thing. The repatriation of billions of dollars of earnings is also in play.
eitally 2y ago
There's a vibrant high-tech contract manufacturing segment of the economy, led by behemoths like Foxconn and several other Asian players who specialize in consumer electronics & computing gear (Compal, Pegatron, Quanta, etc). That doesn't mean manufacturing doesn't exist in the US, though, and there are still very large EMS firms with significant presence domestically, like Jabil, Flex, Celestica, Sanmina, and plenty of others. The difference between now and 25 years ago is that it hasn't been cost effective to manufacture high volume, low complexity electronics in the US for a full generation. But, the majoarity of high complexity, low volume (NPI, very large PCBs, PCBs with many complex layers) stuff is still made in the west, and there will always be meaningful demand for high tech manufacturing in regulated industries (defense, medical), too. For example, CGMs are made in Alabama & Ireland, avionics for Apache helicopters are made in Alabama, data center server racks for Meta are assembled in Finland, Germany & San Jose. Same for Netflix CDN racks. It goes on and on. The majority of what has been outsourced to China (and Taiwan and Singapore and India and Vietnam) is the "face" of high tech electronics, and the majority of electronic piece parts components, but not final assembly and not much of the tricky stuff. I don't think we'll see a quick ramp of high-vol/low-mix mfg coming back anytime soon because too much of the supply chain is in Asia, but it could if there were sufficient demand.
- MichaelZuo 2y ago
  How does this square with 5G radios being almost entirely made in Asia? As in the entire chain from antenna design to finished chip happens >90% in Asia by dollar value. None of the things you mentioned come even close in terms of complexity, on a per cubic volume basis at least.

by pavon 2y ago

parhamn 2y ago

If you go by manufacturing jobs, BLS seems to have the data going back to 1939. Peaks at 18.4m jobs in 1969. Currently at about 12.9m. N.B. the current U.S. population is 1.6x the population of 1969. https://data.bls.gov/timeseries/CES3000000001 https://data.bls.gov/timeseries/CES3000000001

macleginn 2y ago
Average productivity per manufacturing worker in the US grew on average by 3% per year in the 1950–1980s and 4% per year in 1990s (https://www.bls.gov/opub/mlr/2002/06/art4full.pdf https://www.bls.gov/opub/mlr/2002/06/art4full.pdf), i.e. its current output is comparable with that of ~50m people working in 1969, so a 30% decrease in total manufacturing employment was probably well compensated for (putting aside the social welfare point of view).

speleding 2y ago

> Do you have a source for this? There are reams of economic literature trying to estimate whether government intervention in the market was a good idea. Most of the time it doesn't turn out great. So the parent's suggestion "probably won't be a win for economic output" is a pretty safe bet. Often governments will use "security" as an argument to keep steel, shipbuilding, etc, in the country. That argument is not really possible to evaluate on economic grounds.

corimaith 2y ago
Well I do think the security argument does stand, you don't want to outsource navy carrier construction to China for example. Just don't expect a thriving economy to be built around it.
woodruffw 2y ago
Does “government intervention” include subsidies and R&D, in your account? I can think of more than a few industry segments (aerospace, biotech, etc.) that likely wouldn’t exist or be nearly as lucrative as they currently are without the extensive government intervention that helped build them.
- cogman10 2y ago
  And continues to make. The NHS, for example, is a major source of funding for research into new drugs and treatments. mRNA vaccines came from decades of NHS funded research that the manufacturers are just now picking up and running with. It should also be pointed out that economic goodness is not and should not be the be-all end-all reason for government spending. Governments building parks, for example, is a social good with little economic value (or at very least hard to quantify benefits). In the case of things like medicine, government spending there has a social good of limiting communicable disease which is more important than how much money a drug company can make off a drug. For something like TSMC putting plants in the US, even if it's somewhat economically disadvantageous we are still talking about bringing onshore more jobs and training for US citizens which will generally increase our capabilities here and the satisfaction of those employees. Trying to get onshore development of electronics, the government basically has 2 levers to pull, either subsidizing building new manufacturing or applying tariffs to incoming tech goods. One of those levers has the negative consequence of raising prices on tech goods for everyone while we wait for manufacturing to build out.
  - lostlogin 2y ago
    > the government basically has 2 levers to pull That’s simplistic and assumes a baseline where the relationship with the government starts at zero. The company pays taxes. There can be negotiations over the tax rate, which is not a subsidy so much as a ‘tax you less’ type arrangement. This can happen at multiple levels for a company like Apple, even beyond the state/federal thing. The repatriation of billions of dollars of earnings is also in play.

eitally 2y ago

There's a vibrant high-tech contract manufacturing segment of the economy, led by behemoths like Foxconn and several other Asian players who specialize in consumer electronics & computing gear (Compal, Pegatron, Quanta, etc). That doesn't mean manufacturing doesn't exist in the US, though, and there are still very large EMS firms with significant presence domestically, like Jabil, Flex, Celestica, Sanmina, and plenty of others. The difference between now and 25 years ago is that it hasn't been cost effective to manufacture high volume, low complexity electronics in the US for a full generation. But, the majoarity of high complexity, low volume (NPI, very large PCBs, PCBs with many complex layers) stuff is still made in the west, and there will always be meaningful demand for high tech manufacturing in regulated industries (defense, medical), too. For example, CGMs are made in Alabama & Ireland, avionics for Apache helicopters are made in Alabama, data center server racks for Meta are assembled in Finland, Germany & San Jose. Same for Netflix CDN racks. It goes on and on. The majority of what has been outsourced to China (and Taiwan and Singapore and India and Vietnam) is the "face" of high tech electronics, and the majority of electronic piece parts components, but not final assembly and not much of the tricky stuff. I don't think we'll see a quick ramp of high-vol/low-mix mfg coming back anytime soon because too much of the supply chain is in Asia, but it could if there were sufficient demand.

MichaelZuo 2y ago
How does this square with 5G radios being almost entirely made in Asia? As in the entire chain from antenna design to finished chip happens >90% in Asia by dollar value. None of the things you mentioned come even close in terms of complexity, on a per cubic volume basis at least.