There are at least eleven aircraft manufacturers in China. China has been manufacturing Aircraft and Aircraft parts and Airframes for over 65 years. Heck even the so-called European AIRBUS A320 has been made in China since 2009."Coach" purses are going to be made in India..instead of China...because Chinese wages are "too high". Gosh, I wonder why "Coach" moved out of the USA several years ago? ( maybe our productivity was too high). IMHO, WE..as a Nation need to focus on Education..namely Math and Science...to create jobs. Inovation and new ideas can create jobs. Productivity has gone the way of the buggy whip. No matter how many you can build in one-hour.... you still can not sell them.

Mrfixit: Boeing and Airbus basically own aircraft manufacturing - Embraer and Bombardier are next. But that was an example.

The point is that numbers don't lie.

http://blogs.forbes.com/timworstall/...manufacturing/

Manufacturing itself is quite healthy - it's the jobs that aren't. So what does that mean? It means we're producing more with less - in other word, "productivity".

If manufacturing itself is healthy then perhaps the discussion should be about jobs/products/factories that are no longer in existence here in the USA that have been outsourced to other countries around the world.

There is absolutely no doubt that more can be produced per hour generating a lower cost per hour, requiring fewer workers per hour.
The issue is when companies have no incentive to invest in new manufacturing in the USA, at a profit, they will CONTINUE to do so else where.

Billions/trillions of dollars of profits made by US corporations offshore, are not being brought back to this country to invest in new operations because of the current tax structure.

For those of us whose careers were in the manufacturing industries, we remember things like 25,000 workers in Appliance Park making major appliances back in the 30 years ago and today less than 5000.

How many plants/jobs that once upon a time manufactured automotive components have disappeared to off shore facilities. GM's Saginaw steering gear division once upon a time used to manufacture components for many of the then growing Japanese car makers.

If one would apply the concept of making more with less, adjusted for market growth of the past 30 years, not taken off shore....there would be quite a different discussion being conducted today.

Add the current unfriendly approach by the current administration towards business/manufacturing along with no direction for new job creation in just the energy sector alone is a staggering contributor to no new jobs.
Instead of letting the free markets determine where the jobs should/could be we have resorted to letting politics make the determination. We certainly don't want to bring back jobs from off shore and upset the non US entities would we....as viewed by the oh so honest and incapable representaives in Washington.

The jobs creation issue is simple to solve....we just are not doing ANYTHING to generate the jobs. Because of politics and the complete lack of business/market sense in Washington, DC.

Like energy independence, job creation is not a priority or agenda item for the current administration.

How much of the spending proposals and actual $$$ spent have been directed to job creation? Will be directed at job creation? Could be directed to job creation?

Why allow a company like GE to pay no taxes in 2010 on domestic operations, yet not give consideration to a reduced tax rate to bring profits from off shore operations back to the USA?

Not a priority. Current politicians do not understand the business equation.
Current politicians do not really care. And far too many we the people, the new entitlement generation certainly don't want to care.

None of the above will CHANGE until there is REAL CHANGE in Washington.....not just pretty speeches about it.

btk

To take an example from an industry I know well, we (meaning the IT industry) used to employ THOUSANDS of people to manually string together something called "magnetic core memory" (they looked like a fabric of tiny metal donuts string together in a weaved pattern).

Today memory is made completely by machine. We make plenty of it - to say nothing of all the other kinds of chips we make - almost completely automated - done by robots.

I've seen the same thing happen in sector after sector. You don't need as many people to build a Ford as you used to. Not by a long shot. But now you're building a $30K-$40K Ford with those fewer people instead of the 42K-$3K 40 years ago (the price of the car outstripping inflation for a variety of reasons)

Bulding up the manufacturing sector will be good for things like our trade deficit but it's not the panacea for employment as it just doesn't take as many people to build stuff as it used to.

Predictable
 

Billie, we didn't lose all those jobs overnight. Policies for job creation haven't been on the agenda for several...many...administrations from both parties, going back a long, long time.

I can recall back in the mid-1970's I was asked to give a presentation to the Army Command and General Staff College (CGSC). The CGSC is a step in the training of all senior Army officers, all bird colonels for the most part, in preparation for promotion to general officer.

I was an active reserve officer myself and the time I was responsible for all commercial banking in the central U.S. for my bank, one of the largest in the country...financing the "rust belt", if you will. The U.S. steel industry had already begun its decline and any financial analyst at the time would have reached the same conclusion that I did--that other than the production of specialty steel and fabrication, "big steel" was headed offshore. closer to the sources of raw materials and cheaper labor. The United Steel Workers were one of the most powerful unions at the time and the pay and benefits of U.S. steelworkers were legendary...uncompetitive, unaffordable and unsustainable.

The colonels were aghast at my proposal. We spent more than the allotted time discussing how a country could have an effective fighting force without an industry as fundamental as steel as a key part of the military-industrial complex. We didn't reach a conclusion, of course. But over then next 10-15 years, my prediction was realized. As a banker I had done my job. I had scaled back on the extension of credit to the big steel companies so that we were assured that our loans would be repaid before the companies failed or went out of business.

Sadly, I had to do the same thing with the auto companies only a few years later. That was harder for me because I had worked for ten years in the auto industry in Detroit at the beginning of my career. I remember the day I told the Chairman of our bank that I intended to scale back credit to Chrysler as our commitments to lend to the company rolled off--that in my opinion Chrysler could not survive. He too was aghast--Chrysler was our fifth most profitable account and he was a close friend of Chrysler's then-CEO. It took a little longer than I projected, but in the end I was right regarding Chrysler as well. But he knew that I knew Chrysler well--I had worked in senior manufacturing positions for Chrysler for five years.

The saddest part of the story, my story, is the shut-down and dismantlement of the Detroit Plant of The Budd Company, a major auto supplier of body stampings, wheels and brakes. When I worked there, my first job out of college, that plant employed almost 10,000 people on three full shifts. I was proud to be a part of such a successful and vibrant company. The end of that plant's story is told in a book entitled, Punching Out by Paul Clemens. Read it if you get a chance.

Great Response
 

Great Response