Advanced manufacturing is booming, it just isn't producing many jobs

[Recursion]

https://www.technologyreview.com/s/602869/manufacturing-jobs-arent-coming-back/

It bears noting that the nature of the new manufacturing growth may only be deepening the political problem of manufacturing. Trump promises to “bring back” millions of manufacturing jobs for dispossessed workers by modifying the terms of trade: by renegotiating NAFTA, rejecting the Trans-Pacific Partnership, and slapping China with tariffs. But the fact that the U.S. manufacturing sector has been succeeding by many measures in recent years makes Trump’s promises seem like false dreams.

In fact, the total inflation-adjusted output of the U.S. manufacturing sector is now higher than it has ever been. That’s true even as the sector’s employment is growing only slowly, and remains near the lowest it’s been. These diverging lines—which reflect improved productivity—highlight a huge problem with Trump’s promises to help workers by reshoring millions of manufacturing jobs. America is already producing a lot. And in any event, the return of more manufacturing won’t bring back many jobs, because the labor is increasingly being done by robots.

Boston Consulting Group reports that it costs barely $8 an hour to use a robot for spot welding in the auto industry, compared to $25 for a worker—and the gap is only going to widen. More generally, the “job intensity” of America’s manufacturing industries—and especially its best-paying advanced ones—is only going to decline. In 1980 it took 25 jobs to generate $1 million in manufacturing output in the U.S. Today it takes five jobs.

The automated, hyper-efficient shop floors of modern manufacturing won’t give Trump much room to deliver on his outsized promises to bring back millions of jobs for his blue-collar supporters.

I work in a manufacturing company now. We have I think 4 line employees, out of 50 total. Most of us are in R&D or design. And we produce systems with those 4 line workers that would have taken hundreds of workers 20 years ago.

[Wellstone ruled]

1. No Surpise here.

Process Engineers have been forecasting this for a decade. Technology is the real threat to unskilled worker or limited skilled worker. If any of these Trump Voters think their lost jobs are coming back to the USA,FORGET ABOUT IT.

This Election put this Country on the hard path to a third world Nation that will be the Worlds Permanent Military for hire by the Wealthy.

[The Velveteen Ocelot]

2. 200 years ago in England there were the Luddites.

These were textile workers who feared the new technology of the industrial revolution would eliminate their jobs. They destroyed machines and rioted; the unrest became so extreme that large numbers of soldiers were deployed to parts of northern England to suppress the "machine-breakers." I have to wonder whether history might repeat itself. When the disappointed Trump voters finally realize they were had and their jobs aren't coming back because of automation (assuming they do realize this and don't blame it on the Mexicans), will they start busting up the robots?

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Luddite