#359. Made in America – A Case for U.S. Manufacturing

• Manufacturing jobs in the United States have been steadily declining over the past 40 years. Manufacturing employment, as a percentage of total payroll, has decreased from 25 percent in 1970 to just 8 percent today. One in six United States factory jobs has disappeared since the start of 2000.
• Although manufacturing employment in the U.S. has trended down for the past 40 years, manufacturing output – as measured per employee – has increased steadily during the same time frame. It is up 70 percent since 1977.
• Productivity is as an all-time peak. It took 1,000 workers to do in 1960 what 184 workers can do now.
• America manufactured more goods in 2009 than the Japanese, Germans, British, and Italians combined. The United States remains the world’s mightiest manufacturing economy producing 21 percent of all goods globally.
• The world has gotten a lot “smaller” over the past 50 years. Back in the 1960s, what was produced in the United States was primarily consumed here. The same was true in other parts of the world. With the advent of ocean containerization and international shipping in the 1970s, that scenario began to change. The emergence of the Internet and other computer-based technologies in the 1990s was another great leap forward.
• Warren Buffett, Chairman of Berkshire Hathaway and one of the world’s most highly respected investment gurus, has observed that, “Money will always flow toward opportunity, and there is an abundance of that in America.” Despite economic gains by other countries, the United States has been the world’s largest national economy since 1890.