The United States is number one in the number of manufacturing jobs in the world

[Peacetrain]

http://wiki.answers.com/Q/What_country_has_the_largest_manufacturing_industry_in_the_world

With just the sheer numbers of people in China, they should pass us up at some point.

But the good news is that our manufacturing sector grew again this month.. I think that is four months in a row.

But to be really competitive in the 21st century, we need to step into new technologies.

If every cloud has a silver lining, maybe this GOD awful recession has one. I have been teaching at a local community college for the last few weeks, and their growth is off the charts. Students who are already in the work force returning to retool for new jobs for a different type of economy.

Maybe we will have been kicked off our stools and forced into the 21st century.

[dmallind]

1. Oh they surely will. Bound to.

But it's not a zero sum game. The total "pie" of manufacturing output is growing along with its population and income. The more countries which develop more people with income to spend beyond daily needs, the more every manufacturing country has a chance to meet those needs.

As of right now UN data has China producing only $30B less than us in pure manufacturing (excluding mining and utilities) at just under $1.8T. When 2009 data is done I would not be at all surprised to see us switch places, with growth in both nations but more in theirs than ours. Both China and the US can grow, but it's silly (and childish) to care whether you are #1 or #2, especially when compared to a country with a population more than four times ours and an omnipotent central government that can shape the nature of their economy at will.

[Peacetrain]

2. You are exactly right.. It would be the height of self absorbed

foolishness not to think at some point a country as large as China, would not pass us up in manufacturing output.. Just the sheer numbers.

The fact that we are growing again is very good news.

We need to see that job growth for a new century is education linked into a different economic model. Not just going to the factory and punching a card.

The information age has started to really come to the masses as an employment opportunity and not just a communication tool for facebook and emails ;)

[treestar]

8. ITA, the zero sum game crowd never gets that the more prosperous

people there are, the more customers - that crowd just believes their employer should pay them regardless of whether the employer has anyone to sell to!

The more prosperous the Chinese get, the more likely they are to throw off the totalitarian government, too. Win/win as far as I'm concerned.

[RDANGELO]

3. When Ronald Reagan stepped into office,

manufacturing was about 20% of our GDP. Now it is about 10%. As a percentage of GDP, most other industrialized countries have a higher manufacturing rate. This is what our free trade policies have done to us.

[MannyGoldstein]

4. But It No Longer Pays a Living Wage

I work closely with the manufacturing division of my company. People get paid little, but that little is still far more than the $2 an hour paid to Chinese workers. So, when volumes of a product made at our factory start ramping up, the manufacturing gets moved to Asia.

We need tariffs to protect American workers, it's the only thing that works. Clinton/Summers got rid of them, I don't think they're coming back until we get some more actual Democrats in office.

[Peacetrain]

5. That is why unions are so important.. but in all honesty Manny

we have to realize, making widgets on a line in a factory is not coming back as a middle class upward bound sort of job.

And in reality it never was. If you have ever worked a line, and I have, it is mind numbing and soul destroying repetitive work.

It paid good, because we fought for it. But under Reagan for good or ill, the factory job started losing steam.

We are into a very new reality. We need people educated who can run the robots who will run the lines and can problem solve on an entirely different level than just hit it with the screwdriver and hope it starts running again.

I am now white collar union, I teach, but I am union and proud.

I see a totally different work force developing, that I will probably never be fully part of.. too old school, but it really is a very changing force.

Community colleges are turning out the work force of the future,

It is no longer a following Mom and Dad to the line at the meat plant, auto plant etc, and hoping the kids do better reality.

Even education is going to be a one on one with the screen.

I will not be needed in the not too distant future.

Just like the scanner at the end of the self checkout lines in the grocery store.

[90-percent]

6. Machine Tools

I have spent my entire professional career, up to March 2009, working for machine tool builders. I worked on Computer Numerical Controlled machine tools - lathes and mills in all sorts of modern variants - multi-axis, multi-spindles, 25,000 RPM, ludicrous speed processing and high speed cutting with hi tech pvd coated carbide cutting tools.

My former company had a cnc turning machine with multi axis capability and an opposed pick off spindle where you could put raw bar in one side, and yield completed parts coming out the parts catcher on the other side. This machine could conceivable put out of work 20 or 50 workers of traditional factory machines, where each feature of the part is one work station, with human operator, and the part slowly migrates through the factory, risking scrappage at each work station.

In short, this equipment is justified by putting labor intensive jobs and people out of work. To stay traditional in manufacturing is simply to die. You have to keep up with technology to survive. The quality of the part, contained in one machine for it's entire manufacture, is as good as it could possibly be with the cnc chip removal process!

But, this shifted the work to other arenas - sales, inventory, cnc programming, and other indirect jobs grow to support the output of the cnc machine tool. So it's a displacement of workers from a job of drudgery to jobs where thinking and education are required.

The goal in manufacturing is to take the operator out of it and shrink the direct labor work force. Operations that didn't do that are long gone or a quaint anachronism.

I was at a Solidworks User Group meeting last night. There was a presentation by the Connecticut Corsair Project. http://www.connecticutcorsair.com/index.php

They are doing what amounts to archeology about how these planes were originally made. A remarkable project of reverse engineering (copying) parts built from 40's methodology using modern state of the art technology like laser scanners and photo-telemetry and modern computer coordinate measuring machines to duplicate old labor intensive manufacturing processes. In very many cases, because they didn't find any Assembly instructions or fixtures, the methods for how these planes were first built has been lost to history. plate that may have been cut out by hand with many people following a scribed line in a aluminum plate with a bandsaw are now sliced out of sheet on a cnc laser cutter!

I love manufacturing and I've been fascinated all my life with how things are made. I've been offended since I got in to the business thirty years ago at how casually American Executives would shut down American manufacturing capability and whore it out to overseas companies that thrive on doing what we used to do. There are entire technologies in manufacturing, like dvd players, vcr,s tv's, shoes, clothes, washing machines, and other stuff, that are no longer manufactured in any form in the USA.

There's plenty of manufacturing going on in the USA to this day, but it's pretty invisible to all of us because very few in America are involved with manufacturing anymore. Any economist will tell you that the only way to maintain prosperity is to have a strong manufacturing base. Cutting each other's hair don't do it. And, money handling (banking and Wall Street) unto itself won't create any wealth either. Especially because the big money is in extraction, not producing, as Dylan Ratigan says when ever he talks about the bailouts.

Manufacturing is the red haired stepchild of business and less people in America have any appreciation or understanding of it these days. I myself love it, but, admittedly, there's more to manufacturing that I don't know than what I know! I know precision material removal by the chip making cutting tool process, and there's a lot more out there than that slice!

-90% Jimmy

[Peacetrain]

7. Ahh you are in the fun part of manufacturing, where it is moving.

Manufacturing old school, is going away... that is what is fun to see at the Community Colleges..the technical prowess that will be involved with new manufacturing models.. It is a brave new world for those with the skills.


Skills are needed in every province of job production.


Education beyond a high school degree will be mandatory to get ahead in the future.

[90-percent]

9. fun part

lets take growing health care needs due to a baby boom demographic bulge. big demand for health care workers. demand so high you can enjoy a prosperous middle class life because the pay is good these days, and the future the demand will be greater. watch out for the tipping point on boomers! there will come a time, perhaps soon, when the population over 55 may start to shrink. then they can pay nurses walmart wages again.

However, there is also a big demand for medical manufacturing and the coolest part of that is the mri imaging and computer modeling to mini-machine a one off part that is an exact duplicate of the patient on the operating table!

You can't call yourself a cnc machinist if you don't know how to make bonescrews, machine titanium, and know how bones are repaired because you've made the parts used to do it.

-90% Jimmy

[old mark]

10. I think that is part of the reason for this recession - the old style manufacturing

jobs are overseas, but our shortsighted corporations here found little to replace them - yet.

I think we are on the verge of a new economy here, including manufacturing.

I worked in factory planning in the 1980's, when much of my job was tearing old installations out, but very little new processes being installed.

I think we will see a lot of innovation in small factories starting in the next years....

mark

[90-percent]

11. rapid prototyping

rapid prototyping is growing at an increasing rate. there's so much tech out there to go from part idea to something you can hold in your hand and resell as your product it's incredible!

for example:

http://www.emachineshop.com/

-jim

[old mark]

18. I believe the next year will see a start in small manufacturing, and the trend

will continue and increase for many years to come.

mark

[Dr Morbius]

12. I have a very smart friend who tells me

...that nano-manufacturing is extremely close to feasibility, and the entire process of making "widgets" will change very drastically very soon. It may be possible, quite soon, to input raw material at one end of a large machine, pop in a card which contains all the relevant engineering information, and produce any number of the desired products at the other end of the machine.

Make can openers on Monday, hand mixers Tuesday, computer mice Wednesday and put any custom logo your customer desires, and deliver it much, much sooner (and cheaper) than it could possibly come from China.

I asked my friend how soon this will happen and he grows mysterious; it is his nature, alas. But imagine, if you will, China gearing up and developing this enormous manufacturing base, and all too quickly for them, America stops ordering stuff. Wal-Mart will take stuff that's cheaper, however fond they may be of the Chinese.

Myself, I think automation and nanobots are the inevitable future for America. I am just not sure when to expect it.

[depakid]

13. Trend lines are telling: Manufacturing in 1972: 23%, 2009: 12%

It's now eclipsed by the financial and service sectors.

Not coincidentally, a steady decline in wage income levels for much of the middle class has followed.

If one were to plan for the (not too distant) future, the incentives would have to be aimed at decoupling from globalization and long supply chain and re-localizing production of basic useful goods- particularly food stuffs.

The Chinese bonanza isn't going to last any longer than the cheap oil that's helped to fuel it. Quicker people realize this, the better off everyone will be.

[brentspeak]

14. You didn't read your own link

The link says nothing about the number of American manufacturing jobs -- only the amount of dollars generated by American manufacturing output.

[DCBob]

29. Yes you are correct.. its dollars not jobs.. although $ do equate to jobs as well except..

of course China pays their workers much much less so I am sure they have the largest labor force in manufacturing since their total dollar amount was a close second to the US.

[Kaleva]

15. Working at one job for life is becoming rare.

People are adjusting and learning new skills such as attending trade schools and community colleges.

[hulka38]

16. We need to make things that other countries want.

[golfguru]

17. How does America compete with wages in China & India?

Their wages are like a dollar an hour. Plus they have 8 times
the work force of United States. They have grown at double digit
rates in recent years. We are averaging 2 to 3%.

[harkadog]

19. You are so far off it is not even funny.

China has about 112 million manufacturing jobs and the U.S. has about 12 million. http://www.manufacturingnews.com/news/09/0529/chinesewages.html

[Teaser]

22. # jobs != industrial output

which is what this post references.

[harkadog]

25. Apparently you can't read the OP headline

It says "manufacturing jobs". Are you a sock puppet for the OP?

[Teaser]

28. not finding myself caring.

body text and link refers to industrial output. which was my interest. don't much care about anything else.

sock puppet? Been here longer than you, longer than almost anyone. will be here when you're gone too.

[Warren Stupidity]

20. I would think that such a glaring error would deserve an edit or follow up.

Do you understand that your link is about output (measured in dollars) not people employed?

[Vinca]

21. Is the "production" of hamburgers at Mickey D's still counted as manufacturing?

[mkultra]

27. no, and it never was.

and there are no WMD in Iraq either.

[NorthCarolina]

23. Great, but what exactly do we make in the US besides

planes, military hardware, and autos? Considering consumer goods, I really can't think of any.

[mkultra]

26. we dont make many retail goods.

Main industries include petroleum, steel, motor vehicles, aerospace, telecommunications, chemicals, electronics, food processing, consumer goods, lumber, and mining.

[backwoodsbob]

24. my little roof bolt plant..with 100 odd employees

has added 8 people in the last two weeks.

I think we have turned the corner and are picking up steam