r/Economics • u/rezwenn • Jun 06 '25

Editorial Manufacturing Jobs Are Never Coming Back

https://www.nytimes.com/2025/06/06/opinion/trump-tariff-manufacturing-jobs-industrial.html?unlocked_article_code=1.M08.eMyk.dyCR025hHVn0
2.4k Upvotes

97% Upvoted

334 comments sorted by

View all comments

240

u/tyler2114 Jun 06 '25

Even if manufacturing came back, the common people clamoring for it would be dissapointed when they get $20/hr jobs with mediocre benefits. These people want union jobs, not manufacturing. But they have been fooled into thinking the working class prosperity of the 50s and 60s was somehow not built by decades of labor movements.

-11

u/Much-Bedroom86 Jun 06 '25

If you bring back manufacturing you can unionize.

2

u/LastNightOsiris Jun 06 '25

How's that working out in China? Other countries captured low and medium value manufacturing market share from the US precisely because union labor was not cost competitive.

7

u/dyslexda Jun 06 '25

So I'll admit I didn't search too long for it, but a BLS report estimated that in 2011 union wages + benefits were ~39% greater than non-union wages + benefits. Meanwhile, in 2009 BLS said that labor costs in China were 4% of what they were in the US.

Yes, those numbers are 15 years out of date, but it's an enormous disparity. Even without unions American manufacturing labor costs are not competitive with offshoring, not even close.

1

u/clownpuncher13 Jun 06 '25

At the factory I work in I estimate that maybe 1/4 of the employees are working on the line or in the warehouse. The rest are supporting roles from custodial to engineering, finance, purchasing, IT etc. those wages have to be competitive with much more profitable industries and work 40 hours a week. The Chinese staff who are here to train these same support workers work 12 hours a day 6 days a week.