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It isn't time to give up on the USA. The USA got an extra 378000 manufacturing jobs in the past year and a half. That is jobs, not just automated production.



Even if you have a source for this data, how many of these jobs are going to be lost to automation and process improvements in the next 5-10 years? My father recently retired form a steel mill. He wasn't replaced. My city's entire economy used to be based around steel manufacturing. There's still plants here, but the number of people who work in the steel industry has steadily declined. Here is a cited source to say it's down 42% since 1990 [0]. In addition to the steel industry, I work in the financial sector. It used to take a room full of accountants to file with the SEC. Now it takes one or two to input the data and check for errors in the software. Process enhancements and technology are going to eat people's lunch and manufacturing is one of the easiest areas to automate and streamline.

[0]: https://www.politifact.com/punditfact/statements/2018/mar/08...


How recent? Steel is doing very well right now. They are hiring. Your source even shows this, not that your source is at all trustworthy.

1990 is a long time ago.

Steel is far from the only kind of manufacturing. Even if steel mill jobs all disappeared, overall manufacturing could be doing well. I'm not even 100% sure that steel should be lumped in with manufacturing; it's kind of like the final step of mining.

Process enhancements and technology face declining benefits. At some point, you've automated everything that makes sense to automate.

The jobs are going to stick around for 10 years unless we go back to a policy of purposely regulating American industry out of existence.


You are missing the forest. When mundane tasks are automated people MO e on to better things. Every. Single. Time.


OP was arguing that manufacturing jobs are coming back. I cited a couple examples showing automation is going to make this very hard to be sustainable. I am not arguing that this is a bad thing or that people won't find productive ways to spend their time. I am arguing that bringing manufacturing back is not a long term sustainable plan.


Sources for this number? Also, in addition to how many that existed already? In which industries? Which companies?



What is your source? All I could find is clearly one sided opinions on this matter.


See St. Louis Fed data from FRED: https://fred.stlouisfed.org/series/MANEMP

It's true that manufacturing jobs are on the rise, but it's still fairly clear what the long term trend looks like.




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