why trump's job promises won't pan out, in one chart....
Posted by
x (aka dmuck)
Dec 4 '16, 14:09
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"Here you can see in the two line plots that the inflation-adjusted output of the manufacturing sector is as high as it has ever been, while employment declined by more than 6 million jobs over 35 years. Viewed positively, the diverging output and employment lines represent a success: They reflect solid increases in U.S. manufacturing productivity. But now look at the declining series of gray bars. These bars report the steadily declining number of workers required to generate each $1 million of manufacturing output during the time period, given the sharply increased productivity of the sector.
And the story is dramatic: In 1980, it took 25 jobs to generate $1 million in manufacturing output in the U.S. Today, it takes just 6.5 jobs to generate that amount—and that’s after five more stable years of little change.
The Trump administration will need to “bring back” a huge amount of manufacturing activity in the next few years if it is going to meaningfully address the plight of displaced production workers with new manufacturing jobs. How much of a manufacturing renaissance would be needed to repair the breach? Since 1980, the nation has lost some 6.4 million manufacturing jobs—more than one-third of the sector’s employment base. Restoring just half of those jobs in the next four years would require, factoring in current manufacturing efficiency and job sparseness, a massive 26 percent surge in manufacturing output. To put that in perspective, this additional needed output would be equivalent to about 100 Tesla “gigfactories.” (And in fact, Tesla only plans to hire 6,500 people to produce an anticipated $100 billion in output over two decades, meaning its highly-automated operation will require just 1.3 jobs to generate $1 million output annually!)."
- bingo (www.brookings.edu)
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