As we’ve written before in this column, the American manufacturing base has eroded drastically. Why is that important for people who don’t want jobs in manufacturing anyway?
One big reason is that the service jobs that have replaced manufacturing jobs pay less, around $16,000 a year less. That gives the people who do them less discretionary income to spend on things that create still other kinds of jobs: jobs in journalism, the arts, architecture and home design, to name only a few. And manufacturing also supports a lot of well-paid engineering and scientific jobs.A solid manufacturing base, when we had it, helped to support us all.
Revisiting The Betrayal of American Prosperity by former government economist Clyde Prestowitz, we learn that it’s not just match or box factories that have closed. Prestowitz writes, “I have watched over the past thirty years as the U.S.-produced content of a Boeing jet has gone from around 70 percent to around 30 percent and as American companies wishing to launch satellites have turned from U.S. rockets to the French, Russians, and Chinese for the boost into space.”
Prestowitz draws on information gathered by Harvard Business School professor Willy Shih to show how what seems a new American high-tech triumph, the Kindle, may be revolutionizing reading but is not putting many Americans back to work. Only the ink in Kindle is made here—in Cambridge, Mass. The other components are made in Asia, so Shih estimates that of the $185 it probably costs to make each Kindle, only $40 or $50 goes to American suppliers.
Corroborating Prestowitz’ warning about high-tech job loss is this bulletin from September 14: “China and other leading nations have gained more than $11 billion in job-creating clean-energy investments—with the U.S. losing an estimated $208 million every day—since the U.S. Senate abandoned comprehensive clean energy legislation in late July, according to a new analysis from Small Business Majority, Main Street Alliance, American Businesses for Clean Energy and We Can Lead.”
The U.S. may lose 1.9 million jobs if the Senate doesn’t revive the legislation, the analysis shows. It also shows that while the legislation has been on hold, investments in clean energy have been moving to China and other countries. That’s particularly unfortunate because the lost jobs, according to the report, would require no special training, but would utilize skills many American workers already have.
