Today's Wall Street Journal has a wonderful article on the seismic shifts in US manufacturing. Despite (or perhaps the cause of) the long-term decline in manufacturing employment in the US, productivity growth has been very strong. Higher-tech parts of the sector have been expanding capacity, even during the recession, while parts of the sector that are not at the technological frontier have been contracting very quickly and/or moving abroad, as the WSJ's chart shows. Production, however, remains broadly weak.
While the process of structural adjustment can be painful, it is encouraging that the US remains a center for high-tech, high-value-added production. Now the key is maintaining the appropriate workforce!
Keep in mind that the first 3 categories are counting companies that are manufacturing offshore.
ReplyDelete