November 2, 2016
THE PRODUCTIVITY BOOM:
American jobs are going to robots, not China. : The vast majority of lost US jobs - 88 percent - were taken by robots and other homegrown factors that reduce factories' need for human labor, according to a study. (Paul Wiseman, 11/02/16, Associated Press)
[R]esearch shows that the automation of U.S. factories is a much bigger factor than foreign trade in the loss of factory jobs. A study at Ball State University's Center for Business and Economic Research last year found that trade accounted for just 13 percent of America's lost factory jobs. The vast majority of the lost jobs -- 88 percent -- were taken by robots and other homegrown factors that reduce factories' need for human labor."We're making more with fewer people," says Howard Shatz, a senior economist at the Rand Corp. think tank.General Motors, for instance, now employs barely a third of the 600,000 workers it had in the 1970s. Yet it churns out more cars and trucks than ever.Or look at production of steel and other primary metals. Since 1997, the United States has lost 265,000 jobs in the production of primary metals -- a 42 percent plunge -- at a time when such production in the U.S. has surged 38 percent.
Posted by Orrin Judd at November 2, 2016 2:55 PM