From: Jurriaan Bendien (adsl675281@TISCALI.NL)
Date: Sun Jan 06 2008 - 15:38:07 EST
I suggested the US manufacturing workforce was "basically halved" across 1980-2007. This is not quite true in absolute terms, only as a relative proportion of the labour force. NIPA Table 6.5 cites 19.8 million fulltime equivalents for 1980 and just under 14 million fulltime equivalents for 2007, meaning an absolute drop in manufacturing employment of about 29.4% across 1980-2007 (bear in mind though that total US nonfarm employment went from about 90 million in 1980 to about 138 million in 2007, i.e. an increase of about 52%). In 1980, there were about 25 million US workers employed in goods producing industries, as against 66 million in service-providing industries (excluding a farm production workforce of about 3.7 million). In 2007, there were about 22 million US workers employed in goods producing industries, as against 116 million in service-providing industries (excluding a farm production workforce of about 3 million). Thus, the total number of workers employed in goods-producing industries did not in fact drop absolutely by all that much, it is rather that the number employed in services enormously increased. In 1980, the US manufacturing workforce was about 80% of the US goods-producing workforce, as against about 60% in 2007. I estimate that, in constant 2000 dollars, - approximately 29 million goods-producing US workers (nonfarm+farm) directly produced $1,567 billion worth of goods in 1980, - approximately 25 million goods-producing US workers (nonfarm+farm) directly produced $4,058 billion worth of goods in 2006 This suggests that the annual value of goods produced per US goods-producing worker is, on grand average, now about two and a half times higher than it was in 1980. There is no evidence, however, that the inflation-adjusted, after-tax wage of production workers increased by two and a half times on average since 1980, nor that the unit-cost of consumer goods on average became significantly cheaper in real terms. Therefore, the ideology that rising material productivity "raises real wages and living standards for American families, so that U.S. workers can buy more for every hour of work" is substantially false. Even on the simplest calculations, worker productivity increased gigantically more than their real disposable income from work did. Jurriaan
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