Although I disagree with some small parts of this article, it is
mostly correct. But, it's a rehash of things that have been discussed
on this list many times. I send it primarily for one quote near the
end of the piece: "The only high-paid factory work left is going be
people who both programme and maintain machines. That work is going to
be high-paid but it requires much higher skills."
7 August 2012 Last updated at 10:30 ET
The decline of US manufacturing jobs and living standards
By Jonny Dymond BBC News, Michigan
"Will work for oil": Robots do much of the work at Michigan's car
factories today
Continue reading the main story
US Economy
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For decades America's vibrant manufacturing sector provided poorly
educated workers a bridge to the middle class. But today's plants need
highly skilled workers who know their way around ultra-high tech
machinery.
On the factory floor of AMI, a Michigan-based maker of fuel cells, one
can hear the future of manufacturing.
It is very, very quiet.
The loudest noise in the brightly lit factory is the beeping of a
hydraulic lift used to replace lightbulbs overhead.
The contrast with traditional manufacturing is sharp: Almost no noise,
no dirt, little physical effort. And requirements for workers are very
different.
"You've got to have the smart people that help build it from the
bottom up," says AMI President Aaron Crum.
"We don't forge things anymore. We use lasers to cut metal, we extrude
ceramics, we do things that are different. And so because of it, we
need a different labour force to make it happen."
Decades of losses
Manufacturing in the US is undergoing the same technological
revolution that sent workers from agriculture to industry at the end
of the 19th Century, says Lou Glazer of consulting group Michigan
Future Inc.
Aaron Crum says manufacturing today needs "smart people"
In the '50s, he says, factory work was a third of the work in America;
now it's below 10%.
Although manufacturing employment has ticked up in recent months,
adding 30,000 jobs since March, the gains pale in comparison to the
losses of the past decade.
Three and half million manufacturing jobs have vanished in 10 years,
bringing the current total to just under 12 million.
As employment has plummeted, productivity has soared. Not for nothing
does the US National Association of Manufacturers boast that American
factory workers are "the most productive in the world".
About 30 minutes' drive from the AMI plant is the ghost of
manufacturing past: Willow Run.
It is an almost unfeasibly large plant that once turned out Liberator
bombers, then Kaiser cars, then transmissions and car bodies for
General Motors.
Willow Run closed in 2010 when GM went bankrupt. Of the plant's five
million square feet, one million has been cleared for sale.
The rest of the factory is an astonishing reminder of what
manufacturing used to be like.
Hulking presses the size of three-storey houses gather dust, corridors
stretch into the gloom seemingly without end, and the warm air is
thick with the smell of machine oil.
'No diploma needed'
Gathered round a table at a nearby diner, former Willow Run workers
remember their first days at the plant. Now in their 50s, they
reminisce about what it took to get a job at the plant.
"You didn't need a high school diploma," says Sterling Mullins.
GM's old Willow Run plant is a reminder of manufacturing past
"You just needed to be a hard worker," says Gerry Gardner, "and you
needed to show up every day, because it wasn't easy work."
Tom White grew up on a farm, "so the skills I had weren't really
applicable".
Those were the days when manufacturing lifted poorly educated men and
put them into America's industrial middle class.
"You could put the kids through college, we had a couple of weeks
vacation," Mr Gardner says.
"And you had enough money to go out and buy a new car. We weren't rich
- I'm not driving no Rolls Royce or anything - but I bought me a GM
car."
Manufacturing jobs still pay well - an average of $77,186 (£49,223) in
pay and benefits in 2010. But there are far fewer of them and, says Mr
Glazer the consultant, they are changing.
"That path to mass middle-class work is gone," he says.
"The only high-paid factory work left is going be people who both
programme and maintain machines. That work is going to be high-paid
but it requires much higher skills."
The US is still a big player in manufacturing. More than 18% of global
manufacturing output comes from the US factories.
And even if American manufacturing has stumbled a little recently as
eurozone orders dry up, many of Michigan's manufacturers are
optimistic about the future.
But the genie cannot be put back in the bottle.
Manufacturing in the US has already changed and will change further,
pressed on one side by technology and on the other by globalisation.
It will be hugely difficult for less-skilled American workers to
attain anything like the living standards of the generation before
them._______________________________________________
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