Monday April 8, 2013 5:45 AM
We live in a post-industrial age, defined more by Google than by General Motors. The term “
post-industrial society” was first popularized by the sociologist Daniel Bell (1919-2011) in a 1973
book, and the change has generally been a boon. The transition from factory to office has raised
living standards, curbed pollution and reduced the number of grueling, often-monotonous jobs. Yet,
this largely beneficial transformation suffers in the popular imagination. The vast “service
sector,” which now dominates the economy, is seen as inferior, low-paying and even frivolous
because it produces nothing tangible.
Almost everyone seems to yearn for a manufacturing renaissance. This would, the reasoning goes,
solve many problems. It would kick-start the sluggish recovery. By providing well-paying jobs,
especially for semi-skilled men, it would strengthen the middle class. By restoring a heritage of “
making things,” it would reduce U.S. trade deficits and re-establish our global economic
pre-eminence. No doubt, millions of Americans endorse this appealing vision. It’s make-believe.
To be sure, manufacturing is reviving, and the more the better. Rising wages abroad and
heightened anxieties about global supply chains are causing some U.S. firms to relocate production
from China or Mexico back to the United States. Cheap U.S. energy costs, reflecting plentiful
natural gas, also favor American factories. Though these trends are welcome, they stop well short
of a sweeping transformation of the economy. On manufacturing, a huge gap separates public
perceptions and economic realities, as Marc Levinson of the Congressional Research Service has
shown in several reports.
For starters, manufacturing’s decline is misunderstood. The truth is that output has continued
to climb. In 2010, Levinson reports, U.S. manufacturing production of nearly $1.8 trillion was the
largest in the world; it was slightly ahead of China’s, about two-thirds higher than Japan’s and
nearly triple Germany’s. China may now be No. 1, but the U.S. remains a manufacturing powerhouse.
In 2011, near-record output was 72 percent more than in 1990 and six times greater than in 1950.
Recall some American-made products: commercial jets, earth-moving equipment, gas turbines. (Output
refers to “value added,” which is the difference between the sector’s purchased inputs and its
final products.)
Manufacturing’s “decline” refers mostly to job loss, which is stark and long-term. In 1970, the
17.8 million manufacturing jobs represented 25 percent of all 71 million U.S. jobs. By 2012, the
11.9 million manufacturing jobs were only 9 percent of the 133.7 million total. The declines
reflect two forces: automation and imports, especially of labor-intensive products. In 2011,
Levinson notes, 97,000 steelworkers produced nearly 10 percent more steel than the 399,000 did in
1980. As for labor-intensive products, clothing output has dropped more than 80 percent since 1980,
with jobs falling from 1.3 million to 150,000.
For society, this is a mixed bag. People who lost their jobs, or couldn’t find one in local
plants, were often devastated. Manufacturing’s shrunken size also means that it can’t
singlehandedly sustain recovery or cut unemployment. To date, factory jobs have risen 512,000 from
their low point; that’s only 9 percent of the total increase of 5.9 million. Finally, Levinson
notes, automation has eliminated many factory-floor jobs; professionals and managers are almost a
third of manufacturers’ work force. Factories will provide less economic and social support for
blue-collar workers than in the past.
On the other hand, automation improves the workplace. It replaces exhausting, dangerous or
boring jobs. In his book
America’s Assembly Line, historian David Nye quotes an early worker at a Ford plant on the
demeaning regimentation of factory work: “Henry Ford has reduced the complexity of life to a
definite number of jerks, twists and turns. . . . When the whistle blows the worker starts to jerk
and when the whistle blows again he stops jerking.” Many electronic assembly jobs outsourced to
Asia today are similar: “The assembly line ran very fast,” complained one worker for the
electronics assembler Foxconn, “and after just one morning we all had blisters.”
More important, greater factory efficiency raises living standards. Prices are held down;
purchasing power expands. This has enabled Americans to spend more on education, health care,
travel, recreation and much more. Because these activities typically don’t require the huge energy
inputs of heavy industry, society becomes less energy intensive. This is happening in all advanced
nations; since 1973, manufacturing’s share of Sweden’s employment dropped from 28 percent to 13
percent.
It’s a mistake to romanticize manufacturing and disparage services, portraying them as separate
economic realms in competition with each other. In reality, they’re completely intertwined. Almost
all services depend on manufactured products. Air travel requires planes, the Internet needs
computers, and health care dispenses pharmaceuticals. And almost all manufactured products generate
services. Cars provide transportation, homes give shelter, and films offer entertainment. There’s
plenty of industry left in post-industrial America.
Robert J. Samuelson writes for the Washington Post Writers Group.