Factory jobs aren't the future working Americans want
Why have our two oldest presidents fixated on 'bringing back' factory jobs? Both grew up in the '50s, when the United States bestrode a war-ravaged world like an industrial colossus. But the answer isn't just nostalgia for a lost 'golden age.'
There's also a pervasive feeling that our country owes a promissory note to working families hit hard by deindustrialization. The disappearance of manufacturing jobs with decent pay and benefits — traditionally their ticket from high school to the middle class — has undermined their living standards and social standing.
Since 1971, the share of Americans who live in lower-income households has increased, reports the Pew Research Center:
'Notably, the increase in the share who are upper income was greater than the increase in the share who are lower income. In that sense, these changes are also a sign of economic progress overall.'
The emergence of a highly educated upper middle class, however, is scant consolation to economically insecure working families. This divergence in the economic prospects of college and non-college workers is at the root of today's working-class revolt against political elites here and across Europe.
Populists insist that the cure for economic inequality is more factory jobs. But is this really what working Americans want?
Urged on by progressives, President Biden spent trillions to rebuild the economy 'from the middle out,' shelved trade in favor of tariffs and industrial policy, and tried to break up Big Tech companies that have supplanted yesterday's industrial giants. Yet Bidenomics delivered only marginal net gains in production jobs.
President Trump thinks he can do better by taxing imports so much that manufacturers will be forced to locate production here lest they lose access to America's huge consumer market. Both approaches gloss over the fact that the U.S. still has a healthy manufacturing sector — in 2023, it was the world's second largest after China in terms of output.
What's changed is that productivity gains and automation have combined to shrink factory employment. Since 1980, the share of U.S. workers in manufacturing has steadily declined to just over 8 percent. This trend away from labor-intensive production won't be reversed. The only way a high-wage country like ours can stay competitive in manufacturing is to make our factories more efficient.
Meanwhile, nearly 80 percent of Americans make their living in service-oriented jobs. The Economist notes that the manufacturing wage premium is falling, and there are lots of jobs with decent pay available to workers without degrees in skilled trades, repair and maintenance, health care and tech-related fields.
The digital economy, especially, has become a prodigious source of good jobs and careers for workers on either side of the diploma divide.
A new analysis by my Progressive Policy Institute colleague Michael Mandel finds that, since 2019, employment in the tech/info/ecommerce sector — which encompasses broadband, cloud computing, software and data centers as well as online retail — has risen by 18 percent, compared to a 4 percent gain in the rest of the private sector. The average weekly pay is 47 percent higher than in other private sector jobs.
Given these shifts in the locus of opportunity for working Americans, Trump's inflationary tariffs make no economic sense. They're best understood as reparations for past economic injuries suffered by his blue-collar base.
Yet non-college Americans don't seem eager to return to assembly-line work. Asked in a PPI poll where in today's economy they see the best career opportunities for their children, only 13 percent picked manufacturing, while 44 percent chose 'the communications/digital economy, such as writing code, managing data or e-commerce.'
Democrats should leave the smokestack reveries to Trump and the populist left and offer frustrated working families something different: A positive vision for how they can flourish in post-industrial America.
Their top economic priority is getting the cost of living down. Perversely, Trump's tariffs do just the opposite. Democrats should offer full-throated opposition to protectionism and work to dismantle tariffs on U.S. friends and allies.
They should also get out of their defensive crouch on trade. In a supreme irony, Trump's trade wars are making Americans free traders again. Not only are his tariffs unpopular, but voters now overwhelmingly say that trade improves their quality of life.
Putting working families first also means cutting regressive taxes on work, fighting exclusionary zoning that drives housing prices out of reach and breaking up concentrated markets like food processing, ticketing and hospitals and health care providers to expand consumer choice and drive prices down.
The centerpiece of a new Democratic offer to working families should be a new national commitment to guaranteeing 'high skills for all.' Non-college Americans, a majority of the electorate, need a more robust alternative to college: A post-secondary system of work-study opportunities that enable young people to get in-demand skills, credentials and work experience quickly and affordably.
Key features of this twin-track approach to upward mobility include dramatically ramping up apprenticeships, eliminating degree requirement for all but highly technical jobs, expanding 'workforce Pell Grants' for high-quality training programs, creating work-study opportunities for all high school students and supporting innovative 'apprenticeship degrees' that enable people to earn money while earning degrees.
President Trump isn't wrong that blue-collar workers have borne the brunt of deindustrialization. But his promise of a factory job boom is Fool's Gold.
Instead, Democrats should offer working families a new deal that equips them to compete for the jobs that define America's future, not its past.
Will Marshall is the founder and president of the Progressive Policy Institute.
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