What Happened To All Those High-Paying Manufacturing Jobs?

Every four years we have a Presidential election in the United States. And every four years both candidates promise to bring back all those high-paying manufacturing jobs that have been shipped overseas.

The Democrats say they will rebuild our manufacturing economy by increasing taxes on what American companies earn overseas; the Republicans say they will make us a manufacturing powerhouse again by cutting government regulations which prevent our manufacturing sector from being more efficient and earning even more.

Back in 1997, manufacturing represented 16% of the annual GDP. In 2021, it was under 11%.

The decrease in how manufacturing contributes to the GDP is reflected as well in the disappearance of jobs in the manufacturing sector, which used to represent 30% of the non-farm workforce in the 1950’s, but today has fallen to less than 10%.

Let me tell you a little personal story about all those wonderful, high-paying manufacturing jobs that have disappeared, okay?

Back in the 1960’s when I was a college student, I worked summers in factories unionized by the Teamsters and the United Steelworkers. My college buddies got jobs selling ice cream at the beach for pennies, I worked as a ‘vacation relief man’ at different manufacturing plants.