We’ve Seen This (Manufacturing) Movie Before

At the dawn of the 19th century, farmworkers were somewhere between 75% and 80% of the entire labor force. That number was still over 50% in 1860. It was not just the Industrial Revolution that increased the number of manufacturing workers in the US, it was an agricultural productivity revolution that allowed more food to be produced by fewer people. Even so, productivity growth was not all that exceptional in the first 60 years of the 19th century.

But that was then and this is now. Today the percentage of the labor force employed in agriculture is less than 2%. Agricultural productivity is up some 16 times since 1880, but we barely have more than two million people working on the farm, about the number working in agriculture in 1820.

The Industrial Revolution and the shift to a manufacturing economy was clearly disruptive to employment. Yet who would advocate going back even 40 years to when the farm labor force was three times the relative size it is today? Especially if you had to be the farm labor? Been there, done that. Not interested in hoeing spuds.

A Manufacturing Renaissance

Just as agricultural output per worker has increased dramatically over time, I think that in the next 40 to 50 years we will see massive gains in manufacturing output without an accompanying large increase in manufacturing jobs. Companies are beginning to bring manufacturing back to the US because automation, robotics, and other new technology make it cheaper to manufacture products locally than to use inexpensive labor in other countries. I am told that Foxconn (in China) is beginning to use robotic manufacturing lines. When Foxconn is turning to robots rather than cheap labor, you know there is a revolution in the offing.

Yet even the manufacturing jobs that are left will not demand a “college degree.” They will require serious skills and technical know-how, but that is different from the typical college degree. That is not to say college education will not be useful, but it is increasingly going to have to be an education that has a focus and goal of a marketable skill.

What is going to be needed is the creation of brand-new industries, as well as the unleashing of the entrepreneurial skills of the younger generation. Small business is the engine of growth for jobs. It seems that all politicians can do is talk about the need to create jobs, yet the reality is that government doesn’t create jobs. It can create the conditions in which jobs are created, but it is up to the individual businessman (or, increasingly, businesswoman) to make a decision to hire additional workers…

Choosen excerpts by Job Market Monitor from

via Where Will the Jobs Come From? | The Big Picture.