The mantra of "good-paying manufacturing jobs going overseas" never seems to be questioned. But I wonder if this "common wisdom" is really true.
There's no question that many hire-and-train jobs are now done in other countries. Simple assembly, clothes manufacture, operation of simple automatic machines, and on and on. But have all the jobs of skilled machinists gone overseas, have all the jobs of process designers gone overseas.
I think not. What has happened is that the skills required for these jobs have become more demanding and the productivity of people performing these jobs has skyrocketed. Higher productivity leads to a lot fewer people needed to produce the same number of goods.
My father's grandfather was a machinist and my mother's uncle was a machinist. I doubt that either could get a machinist job now with the skills they had then. It takes a good eye and a steady hand to produce parts exact to the thousandths of an inch. But now manufacturers have numerically-controlled tools that can do the same thing time after time. The operator sets the job up and may be free to work on something else.
Once upon a time a teen-ager with a tool box could be an auto mechanic. Now auto mechanics use a wide array of electronic gadgets to check and adjust many systems in a car.
My father was a dental prosthetic technician with his own business specializing in crowns. He could afford a lot of big boy toys, bowling, golfing, and betting on the ponies. I have a folder full of testimonials from dentists praising the skill and timeliness of his work. Now dentists design a crown while you watch, push a button, chat with you for a few minutes, go downstairs to pick up the crown, and put it in your mouth with a nearly perfect fit.
And even if these old style jobs were still available, would anybody hire a kid off the street, train him in the basics, give him some simple jobs, and guide him in the development of a higher skill level. I doubt it. Many companies want new employees with experience. And often quite specific experience. If you know all about the model 21 machine, but a company has model 22 machines, fuhgedaboudit!
If any state or national government wants to solve the "jobs" problem, they should stop trying to create the unneeded jobs and start training people for the needed jobs. And even if they do that, will the needed jobs of today become the unneeded jobs of tomorrow?
