After decades of exodus, companies returning production to the U.S.

[Playinghardball]

In 2001, Generac Power Systems joined the wave of American companies shifting production to China. The move wiped out 400 jobs in southeast Wisconsin, but few could argue with management’s logic: Chinese companies were offering to make a key component for $100 per unit less than the cost of producing it in the U.S.

Now, however, Generac has brought manufacturing of that component back to its Whitewater plant — creating about 80 jobs in this town of about ‎14,500 people.

The move is part of a sea change in American manufacturing: After three decades of an exodus of production to China and other low-wage countries, companies have sharply curtailed moves abroad. Some, like Generac, have begun to return manufacturing to U.S. shores.

… U.S. factory payrolls have grown for four straight years, with gains totaling about 650,000 jobs. That’s a small fraction of the 6 million lost in the previous decade, but it still marks the biggest and longest stretch of manufacturing increases in a quarter century.

More here: http://www.latimes.com/business/la-fi-returning-jobs-20140513-story.html#page=1

http://theobamadiary.com/

[merrily]

1. Understandable.

The American worker is desperate. We haven't had real growth in income from wages since the 1970s, but prices have soared.

Unions in the private sector have been broken to a great degree.

"Immigration reform," aka more workers competing with each other for limited jobs, is on the horizon--and Koch won't throw a monkey wrench into that.

Things overseas are costing more now that the companies help grow those economies. Shipping is not free.

And so on.

Whatever it was, it was not concern for workers that is bringing the companies back.