A silver lining: DOL projects manufacturing job losses to slow this decade
Frank O Smith, senior contributing editor -- Manufacturing Business Technology, 1/30/2008 4:17:00 PM
The U.S. Department of Labor (DoL) updated its 10-year job outlook in early December with prognostications that 1.5 million jobs will be lost in manufacturing between 2006 and 2016.
So what’s the “silver lining” in such poor news? “The decline is half of the three million manufacturing jobs lost in the previous decade,” says the DoL.
The projections, updated every two years, call for 15.6 million new jobs overall—a 10-percent increase, but the report noted the rate of growth is down 2 percent from the earlier 10-year cycle.
The slowdown is expected to continue. Service industries are anticipated to provide more than 75 percent of all jobs in 2016. The number of workers employed in goods-producing industries is expected to decrease from 14.9 to 13.1 percent of total employment.
According to Lloyd Wood, spokesman for the American Manufacturing Trade Action Council, “What worries people the most is not losing a job, but getting the next job. It’s more difficult to find one that pays the same, and has the same benefits. Only about 60 percent of manufacturing workers who lose jobs find a new one, and a minority finds one that pays more than the one they had.”
The projected losses truly are cause for concern, says Scott Paul, director of the Washington-based Alliance for American Manufacturing (AAM), a partnership of leading U.S. manufacturers and their unions. “Hopefully this will be a wake-up call to our elected officials to focus attention on making American manufacturing more competitive. It will take a major effort to turn things around, and there are concerted steps that should be taken.”
Key among these are stricter enforcement of trade laws, and efforts to “create a more level playing field for American workers against competition from overseas. The Chinese currency misalignment generates tremendous costs for manufacturers striving to export to China. “It’s in essence a 40-percent tax on U.S. exports to China,” Paul says. “In contrast, Chinese goods are much cheaper than they should be because the Yuan is grossly undervalued.”
Health-care reform and energy costs also must be addressed so as to rebalance American competitiveness, Paul adds.
The accelerating growth of the trade imbalance is of major concern to the American Manufacturing Trade Action Council. “The number of imports from China is exploding, with China representing 40 percent by volume of total U.S. imports. In 2001, before China joined the World Trade Organization, “it was only 6.7 percent,” Wood says. “This has major ramifications on American manufacturing jobs.”
According to the latest figures from the Commerce Department released in early January, the U.S. lost another 31,000 manufacturing jobs in December 2007 in addition to the 13,000 lost in November 2007. For the year 2007, the U.S. lost 212,000 manufacturing jobs. Seasonally adjusted U.S. manufacturing employment now stands at 13.919 million, and 2007 marks the first year that U.S. manufacturing employment has fallen below 14 million since 1950.
“The real shame in the continuing decline of U.S. manufacturing employment is that these are good-paying jobs that can’t really be replaced,” says AAM’s Paul. “Manufacturing jobs contribute much more to the economy than service-sector jobs. Congress and the Administration must take clear action to strengthen American manufacturing and enforce existing U.S. trade laws. Otherwise, more U.S. factories struggling to compete against illegal, subsidized competition from overseas will close and more American workers will lose their jobs.”
Other projections of interest found in the DoL report:
• The number of workers 55 and older will grow 5.5 times that of the overall labor force.
• The number of youth aged 16 to 24 will decline from 14.8 to 12.7 percent.
• The Hispanic labor force is expected to grow five times that of non-Hispanics.
• Asians will continue to be the fastest-growing ethnic labor force, at nearly six times the overall rate of growth.
Featured Company
Most Recent Resources
- From CAD Systems to Customers - New collaboration capabilities bring...
- Real Time Energy Management - FREE White Paper and Video
- Deployed in 45 days, Zebra Enterprise Solutions Material Flow System...
- How to Eliminate 7 Wastes from your Supply Chain with Real-Time...
- Is Your Website Really Winning You Business
