When was U.S. MANUFACTURING at its PEAK?

What? Next you're going to say that crime in the USA has been dropping for 25 years!

http://www.disastercenter.com/crime/uscrime.htm

gfer wrote:

Right now.

https://fred.stlouisfed.org/series/OUTMS

There's nothing wrong with American manufacturing per se. The primary reason that factory *jobs* have dwindled is automation, not off-shoring--and automation cannot be rewound.

Trumpkins don't look at data. They let their emotions guide their thoughts. And trump is masterful at manipulating people with sensitive emotions.

Manufacturing output is back to where it was before the GFC, but only 1/3 of the manufacturing jobs lost have come back.

Clearly, many would see this improvement in productivity as a good thing - certainly it's good for profitability of businesses and it frees people up to work on other important stuff like retail and developing more efficient ways to troll the internet, but there's a couple of million more people who did have manufacturing jobs 10 years ago and now don't who are probably still a bit miffed. Not that many people in the grand scheme of things (a bit over 1% of the labour force), but they tend to be concentrated in small areas so whole towns can quickly go down the drain when a factory closes.

https://data.bls.gov/timeseries/CES3000000001

I would argue probably sometime during the middle of WWII

Peak what?

Peak real wages?

Peak real output?

Peak percentage of labour force?

Horizon wrote:

I would argue probably sometime during the middle of WWII

Manufacturing was at its peak when most of our labor force was overseas?

Piano_Man87 wrote:

Peak what?

Peak real wages?

Peak real output?

Peak percentage of labour force?

Peak real output, according to the link in the OP. I can understand choosing that one because when we think of peak manufacturing we think of the peak "making of stuff." (Okay, at least that's what I think of...)

By the way, the US has a labor force and not a "labour" force.

Huh??? wrote:

What? Next you're going to say that crime in the USA has been dropping for 25 years!

http://www.disastercenter.com/crime/uscrime.htm

Dude it hasn't just been dropping it's *half* of what it was twenty-five years ago.

Horizon wrote:

I would argue probably sometime during the middle of WWII

After WWII. That is when the war-goods makers converted into factories that manufactured many of the goods the war-torn world needed.

probably not wrote:

Horizon wrote:

I would argue probably sometime during the middle of WWII

Manufacturing was at its peak when most of our labor force was overseas?

Ahem, more people were working in the USA making war products than were overseas fighting. To say nothing of the regular businesses that continued on as always.

the carnage stops now!!

gfer wrote:

The primary reason that factory *jobs* have dwindled is automation, not off-shoring--and automation cannot be rewound.

I've been saying this for years--our real battle is against the robots. They represent the greatest threat to humanity!

Most wrote:

probably not wrote:

Manufacturing was at its peak when most of our labor force was overseas?

Ahem, more people were working in the USA making war products than were overseas fighting. To say nothing of the regular businesses that continued on as always.

My use of "most" was hyperbole, but the idea stands. Why would productivity have been higher during a time when a large chunk of the population was overseas than during the industrial boom immediately following the war?

excellent graph. However, what is total world manufacturing? How has the U.S. share of world manufacturing/manufacturing jobs changed? U.S. manufacturing has become much more efficient, so as to produce more with a lot fewer jobs. That does not mean that the U.S. did not lose many, many jobs to other countries. Those jobs are still being done, just much more cheaply. With free trade, often one-sided with China, and the free movement of currency, we have seen enormous manufacturing growth in Mexico, China, and Southeast Asia with job declines in the U.S. This doesn't mean by any stretch of the imagination that our economy has been devastated, but in some parts of the country that is true. You can't just blame automation here.

Actually, according to this article, manufacturing jobs around the world have been declining for some time now. In China, they peaked in the mid 90s and are now declining somewhat. In many countries manufacturing has dropped markedly. China accounts for about 1/3 of the manufacturing job losses in the U.S., according to the article.

https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2014-04-28/why-factory-jobs-are-shrinking-everywhere

probably not wrote:

Most wrote:

Ahem, more people were working in the USA making war products than were overseas fighting. To say nothing of the regular businesses that continued on as always.

My use of "most" was hyperbole, but the idea stands. Why would productivity have been higher during a time when a large chunk of the population was overseas than during the industrial boom immediately following the war?

Your "idea" does not stand. "Most" used in reply to "middle of WWII" is why it fails.

Most wrote:

probably not wrote:

My use of "most" was hyperbole, but the idea stands. Why would productivity have been higher during a time when a large chunk of the population was overseas than during the industrial boom immediately following the war?

Your "idea" does not stand. "Most" used in reply to "middle of WWII" is why it fails.

My idea was that manufacturing productivity was likely higher immediately after the war than in the middle of the war. Do you have evidence to the contrary?

probably not wrote:

My idea was that manufacturing productivity was likely higher immediately after the war than in the middle of the war. Do you have evidence to the contrary?

Sure:

This chart suggests that there was a "local maximum" in the latter part of 1944, then a postwar trough that lasted through the second half of the '40s. Only in 1950 did output once again reach the 1944 levels.

This makes sense to me. The great bulk of the U.S. population stayed home during the war years. In particular, most women (though not my mom-to-be!) stayed in the U.S., and they (Rosie the Riveter et al.) participated in the US's enormous armaments production.

Yes, immediately after the war, most of the guys came home (and most women in factories were laid off); but government-financed armaments production nosedived and the economy moved into a significant recession.

[NOTE that this chart includes more than just manufacturing, but it still gives a solid idea of the general situation. Sorry, it's the best I could find right now.]