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the biggest disservice the political class ever did to the people of the Midwest is to lie to them that it was NAFTA and free trade that killed manufacturing employment
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Looking at absolute numbers (which I think is more useful if you’re trying to match anecdotal experience of job losses to the data), it looks like the recessions that bookended the 2000s really did most of the work.
Reminds me of how people think the birth rate decline started recently whole time it has been dropping since industrialization
The trend is linear irrespective of the shock of NAFTA. So no impact then. Why would there be? The trend is downwards in postindustrial societies.
You can post this chart
Jobs in auto manufacturing down only 3% since before NAFTA
Even stranger is they seem to think that 40% of the workforce should still be working in factories? LOL
We should provide an update to Gen Z. Instead of college, they will be stitching together Nike shoes 12 hours/day for min wage.
You ever think running? You have much more fight and clear view of things than a lot of NorCal congress members. Just saying!
Manufacturing can come back to America, but it won’t result in too many more jobs because manufacturing is getting more and more automated.
It will bring more wealth to the US though, and may result in some spectacular advances in automation.
Yes, post WW2 the US began enacting global policies that removed manufacturing from the US. This has been persistent policy ever since Bretton Woods.
What does extending the chart back to ~1870 show?
Starting it in 1940 when the rest of the industrialized world was annihilating itself is like starting a temperature chart at the end of the Little Ice Age to show global warming.
To what extent is that reduction attributable to technological advancements and automation? In my industry, around 1995, crews became smaller because of new heavy machinery used for infrastructure maintenance, which had previously been performed manually.
sorry it wasn't NAFTA it was me sitting in a bar at UCSD in the 90s tanking manufacturing. my bad.
We have 4% UE and the firmest real wage group in the western world. The average person in the UK makes like $45k a year
What do you think this is showing? The US economy was growing wildly during this period. A sector that is growing but not as fast as the overall economy would also show a decline.
Yeah there already was a trend. Obviously according to your chart. But NAFTA cemented it. Look at all the data you want, that’s the fact.
“When the legend becomes fact, print the legend.”
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The goal should not be to create factory jobs - it should be to created automated factories, on-shore.
this chart is misleading because this is the % of the US economy that is manufacturing when the reality is that the buck of the US economy since 1950 has been steady the service economy and providing goods that are not physical.
Yeah, you can get millions upon millions of good old American 'manufacturing jobs' back just by eliminating all the automation in American factories. Is that what you want, Neanderthals?
Why? Greedy American companies that wanted to increase profits by moving off shore to poorer nations with laxer operational and tax laws.
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Here’s the historical context: 
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Here’s the historical context:
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Corporate profits and greed lead to the exporting of low paying and manufacturing jobs in America.
The correct response at any point would have been to reverse that trend. NAFTA was a continuation of bad economic policy. You fucking clowns miss the forest for the trees.
The good manufacturing jobs are not sunset industries (autos, steel) but cutting edge (advanced chips, robotics, rockets). Need more Elon Musks and less red tape (why Tesla moved new capacity to Texas, reincorporated out of Delaware etc).
Even looking at just ohio, it's hard to say nafta did it. More of a case that the 2000 recession did it
Not to mention the trajectory is more about the US having a manufacturing boom after world wars since Europe saw their industry decimated by war and populations cut down. We had monopolistic industrial development; neolib vs neocon policy didn’t change the slope of man. decline.
However, that shrinking share of employees has been producing an increasing share of GDP since 2010. US manufacturing has been growing the past 15 years.
People confuse the impact of NAFTA (neutral impact on jobs) with the China shock (large negative impact on manufacturing jobs)
As we've moved away from a manufacturing economy we've actually gotten richer. I'm not sure why politicians (and not just Trump) are so nostalgic to bring back manufacturing. We're at 4.2% unemployment and wages are up.
Everyone in my home town remembers when NAFTA passed because of all the plants that *immediately* shuttered and moved to Mexico.
Perhaps that was unrelated or inevitable. But that chart isn’t going to convince someone what they saw with their own eyes.
And think of all those farriers who lost their jobs when the automobile was invented! How can we help them?
Also show the “professional and services chart.” We literally swapped factory jobs for comfier office jobs that pay better
Custom chart intervals to view broader and finer trends, down to the tick
What’s going to come back is will be a tiny fraction of what went out because of automation.
How does that chart corolate with imports from third world countries and the rise of Walmart? Because Canadas Manufacturing chart is pretty damm similar.
Roger and Me is from 1989. And what happened there didn't happen in 1989, either.
Also absolute numbers matter and the fact that the whole industrialized world was turned into rubble (except the US).
Sorry but we're in the "My feels > facts era." This has been a talking point about NAFTA forever
Exactly. Manufacturing was huge in the 50s/60s because we were the only ones to fill the demand gap while Europe was in ruins post WW2. The US needs to expand infrastructure and create jobs in sectors we are competitive in, not jobs that pay for $2 hr in Cambodia.
i feel like this fact is never discussed, manufacturing was declining way before even Reagan.
Every advanced manufacturing economy eg UK, France, Sweden will have a chart looking like that. Just the slope & maximums will be different
Which we are currently at "full employment."
I wonder what jobs they want to go unfilled in order to shift workers to the manufacturing sector?
Wages for manufacturing workers have been increasing, too.
NAFTA didn't affect the trend. And if the US doesn't have a comparative advantage in manufacturing, maybe they shouldn't be specializing in manufacturing. 
Government doesn't know better than the market, and propping up manufacturing is a waste of resources.
Government doesn't know better than the market, and propping up manufacturing is a waste of resources.
Chart crime should lead to jail
given manufacturing high productivity improvement, we should show manuf value not employment
Yeah...and I just bought a fucking 55" 4k TV in 2025 for $250 instead of $3,000. I'll call that a win since all manufacturing will be 99% robots in 5 years and all these same people would be without a job anyhow
Our manufacturing boom in the 50's was due to the fact that we were the only industrialized nation that wasn't bombed to hell and back in the 40's. Nothing (fingers crossed) can replicate that scenario again.
'78/'79 was the peak # of workers in manufacturing though the percentage of manufacturing/GDP had been falling from a peak after the war
So NAFTA had zero effect on manufacturing job losses. The slope didn't change after NAFTA and the bulk of the jobs were lost before NAFTA.
The price of unions, plus comparative advantage -- look it up -- would cause us to be bankrupted if we had to buy shoddy domestic products. If the crap made here were any good, it could survive competition. Companies that made good products survived and survive, still.
Dont leave out the part where jobs have 3x'd because secondary production and services have exploded lol
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NAFTA was bad but that line was heading downward before NAFTA. Automation is the reason factories disappeared. Frontline did a great piece on this & its impacts on MI & OH. A recent piece on a Brawny paper towel factory in GA, that runs 24/7 & only employs 9 people. Automation.
Nothing about that graph shows NAFTA as a definitive factor.
The graph shows US manufacturing in steady decline since the late 60s.
Can we talk about Reagan era deregulation? The Bush years? Where the decline is the steepest.
I'm glad you did because I've never seen it and it confirms a hunch I've had for a while.
Libertarian pro-AI protectionists who want factory jobs back without union protection against automation
And at no point on that long steady decline in manufacturing did we have protectionist tariffs.
But Amand, my harrowing economic challenges were due to evil outsiders plotting against me. This chart suggests otherwise. I dislike your disruption of my narrative.
As far as trends are concerned, NAFTA looks irrelevant. But falling man this hard is still a problem yeah
The main takeaway is that it didn't change the trajectory at all. If we made a trade deal that didn't help, then it hurt us. Obviously.
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It’s called capitalism. Nixon opened up trade with China our factories couldn’t be competitive. We went from a manufacturing nation to a consumer/ service nation. Now we are becoming an obligatory
i feel u man postin the same chart is exhaustin lol maybe try a meme next time :)
Also, should we really care what percentage of US employment derives from manufacturing? How has our standard of living changed during that period?
