Friday, October 28, 2011

Where Have all the jobs gone?



Can you guess what this graph represents? Ok, it has a title so you know. This is a depiction of the number of people employed in the manufacturing sector since 2000. You can see a steady decline long before any problem in 2008.

The question is where did all the jobs go?

Part of it has to do with the diversification of the state economy. Not as many manufacturing jobs, more tech jobs, etc. But that doesn't attribute to the 35% decline in 10 years.

There's a huge component of loss attributed to the pressures of American companies to deliver goods at the lowest possible cost. That means, in order to a) have people buy their stuff, b) make money, American companies are sending work overseas.

Remember, wages is the number one expense for most firms so sending work to China at the fraction of the labor cost is very very attractive. It's also damaging to the local economy. So not only do we build other nation's economies, we ruin our own.....all so we can have cheap stuff to buy at Walmart.


Notes: Data compiled by San Diego Bankruptcy Lawyer Cecelia Chen and dervied from RAND California data sets.

2 comments:

  1. This is a matter for individuals to decide, not governments.

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  2. Individuals will more often than not chose the lowest cost good. If this continues there will be little left in America that's built here. A government intervenes to protect local producers. So the issue isn't as cut and dry as you make it seem.

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