No. of Recommendations: 20
Manufacturing/industrial employment typically ... peaks when GDP per capita reaches about $15000-25000 USD (2024 prices), then starts sliding slowly... the US has been slowly sliding down the rich half of the curve, right where you'd expect.
PS:
An interesting figure from the Economist: " China shed over 20m factory jobs from 2013 to 2023—more than the entire American manufacturing workforce. Research from the IMF calls this trend “the natural outcome of successful economic development”".
Is that no consolation for those who think that US manufacturing industry is in hopeless decline because of the ill treatment by competitive foreigners?
They go on:
"In real terms, America’s [factory output] is over twice as high as in the early 1980s; the country churns out more goods than Japan, Germany and South Korea combined. As the Cato Institute, a think-tank, points out, America’s factories would, on their own, rank as the world’s eighth-largest economy."
As the saying goes, "If I had your money, I'd throw mine away."
Jim
