Reconsidering “Lost Manufacturing Jobs – The Effects of Imports and Increased Productivity”

In a post examining the causes of the decline in manufacturing employment over the past fifty years, I concluded, like other analysts, that although increases in imported manufactured products had caused part of the decrease, most of the drop resulted from productivity increases from automation and process improvements.  See for example https://www.nytimes.com/2016/12/21/upshot/the-long-term-jobs-killer-is-not-china-its-automation.html. Because of the emphasis […]

Upstate’s Uneven Metropolitan Economies – Implications for Policy Makers

The story of New York’s job market since the 1990’s has been a tale of two regions.  The New York City metropolitan area, where two-thirds of the state’s population lives, has seen private sector employment growth (42.4%) that is near the national rate (48.3%). Albany-Schenectady-Troy’s employment growth – 27.5% – is higher than the remaining New York […]

Response to Lost Manufacturing Jobs – The Effects of Imports and Increased Productivity

I’d like to thank Kay Wilkie, who serves on the United States Trade Representative’s Intergovernmental Policy Advisory Committee for offering useful comments concerning my post, “Lost Manufacturing Jobs – The Effects of Imports and Increased Productivity”  Kay points out that “It would be worthwhile to carefully examine and review the aspects of international trade and investment […]

Lost Manufacturing Jobs – The Effects of Imports and Increased Productivity

Note – See an important revision of this post here:  https://policybynumbers.com/reconsidering-lost-manufacturing-jobs-the-effects-of-imports-and-increased-productivity The decline in manufacturing employment in the United States has caused a wrenching economic adjustment, as one path to relatively well paying jobs has narrowed, particularly for workers without college educations.  As the percentage of workers in our society who work in manufacturing industries […]

The Decline of Manufacturing in New York and the Rust Belt

In a recent post I looked at employment changes in New York’s metropolitan areas and compared their performance with other metropolitan areas in the rust belt.  I found that change was inconsistent between cities in each state, and over different time periods.  I argued that industry mix probably was the primary cause of the differing […]