Homestead mailing list

[Gene GeRue <genegerue AT ruralize.com>]

More:

This is a few years old but seems dependable in concept:

Why Are We Losing Manufacturing Jobs?
Federal Reserve Bank of Cleveland. Economic Commentary,  Jul 2004  by  
Fisher, Eric O' N

E-MAILPRINTLINK
In the last 50 years, the share of employment in manufacturing has  
declined in the United States. The main reason for this phenomenon is  
labor-saving technological progress. Variation among state tax polices  
and international economic conditions have played only minor roles.  
The source of future prosperity will be technological advances in a  
service-oriented economy.

Rapid technological progress in manufacturing has led to higher wages  
and rising standards of living for over two centuries, but in the last  
50 years it has also reduced the need for manufacturing labor. The  
primary source of American prosperity is no longer manufacturing; ours  
is now an increasingly service-oriented economy in which innovations  
in high-tech sectors and other professional services are the most  
important sources of future prosperity

Most Popular
Articles in Business
Research and Markets ...
Do Us a Flavor - Ben ...
eBay made easy: ready ...
Katrina's lawsuit ...
Wal-Mart's newest ...
More »
Most Popular
Publications in Business
Business Wire
Black Enterprise
Real Estate Weekly
Los Angeles Business ...
Communication World
More »
The United States has the highest long-term underlying rate of  
economic growth in the world. A conservative estimate is that the  
standard of living of the average American doubles every 30 years. But  
an economy undergoing rapid technological progress is one in which  
some sectors are booming and others are senescent. For example, water  
transport was a primary source of prosperity for Ohio for several  
generations after the opening of the Erie Canal. The advent of a  
national network of railroads at the end of the nineteenth century  
signaled the end of a way of life for many whose livelihood depended  
upon inland water transportation. But there can be no doubt that  
knitting together a national market-first by rail and then by road- 
gave a tremendous boost to the economic growth that our country  
enjoyed in the last century.


We are now at a similar crossroads in economic history. Manufacturing- 
the transformation of tangible substances into more refined  
commodities-is no longer a primary source of prosperity. The  
percentage of people employed in manufacturing in the United States  
has declined steadily since the 1960s, from 25 percent then to less  
than 12.5 percent today. And the United States is not the only country  
to have experienced a relative decline in manufacturing employment;  
the same trend has been part of the economic history of almost every  
advanced economy in the last two generations.

The declining need for workers in a sector that has traditionally  
provided good jobs has naturally generated concern and calls for  
appropriate public policy. Blame for the decline is most often placed  
on "globalization" in general, or the outsourcing of jobs to other  
countries in particular. Some see the shifting of jobs from one state  
to another and conclude that variation in economic policies (for  
example, taxes) is the problem. Deal with these issues, people  
imagine, and we will be able to preserve manufacturing jobs.

But factors such as globalization and state policies account for only  
the tiniest portion of the change. A clue to the true source of the  
shift in manufacturing employment is the fact that all developed  
countries are witnessing the same trend. What that trend tells us is  
that the primary cause of the decline in manufacturing employment in  
advanced economies is the inexorable march of technological progress.

http://findarticles.com/p/articles/mi_qa5294/is_/ai_n24282194