The Great Debate

The American economy is irrevocably shifting from manufacturing to services. Our workforce has gone from 28 percent factory workers and 72 percent service workers in 1978 to 14 percent factory workers and 86 percent service workers today.

But the service sector encompasses tens of millions of “bad” jobs that are unstable and offer low pay with few benefits – routine clerical work, for example, or retail sales, fast food or low-end human services such as nurse’s aides – alongside a relatively small number of well-compensated professional positions, including doctors, lawyers and scientists, as well as astronomically rich investors and plutocrats in the financial sector.

As we move into this service economy, there are political choices to be made – or evaded. We can allow our increasingly laissez-faire economy to take a low road of underpaid and under-professionalized service jobs. Or we can use social investment, taxation and public borrowing to create more high-level careers in the human services, which will, in turn, help stimulate an economic recovery and stem the tide of inequality.

Millions of jobs serving the very young, the very old and the very sick are now low-wage positions. This is a social decision, however, not the product of private supply-and-demand. For the qualifications and earnings for these occupations are determined by prevailing mores as much as by labor markets.

A person caring for 3-year-olds, for example, can be a glorified baby sitter with minimum certification as a day-care worker ‑ or a well-trained professional in child development. So the job can pay minimum wage, or it can be a middle-class occupation and career.

MILWAUKEE -- As Washington and Madison fiddle, this city’s middle class is in slow free fall.

First, the numbers. From 1970 to 2007, the percentage of families in the Milwaukee metropolitan area that were middle class declined from 37 to 24 percent, according to a new analysis by the Southeastern Wisconsin Regional Planning Commission.

(Click on the photo above for a slideshow) During the same period, the proportion of affluent families grew from 22 to 27 percent--while the percentage of poor households swelled from 23 to 31 percent. In short, Milwaukee's middle class families went from a plurality to its smallest minority. 

Update: My apologies. In the first version of this column, I confused two different Camaro models. A corrected version is below.

SHANGHAI –When the third film in Hollywood’s Transformers franchise debuted here in July, vast numbers of young Chinese flocked to movie theaters -- and Chevrolet dealerships. Wealthy moviegoers wanted to buy one of the film’s half-car, half robot main characters, a bright yellow Chevrolet Camaro coupe called “Bumblebee.”

“Everyone knew Bumblebee,” said Richard Choi, the director of sales and marketing for Chevrolet in Shanghai. “I had to get the press guys to call it Camaro, not Bumblebee.”

China’s massive supply of cheap labor may at last be drying up, a development that in time will bring higher wages, inflation, a stronger yuan and help to right dangerous global imbalances.

If these trends hasten financial liberalisation they could eventually set the stage for a broader Chinese bubble.
The formerly extremely unequal balance of power between workers and employers in China appears to be shifting.

Workers for a Chinese company which supplies Honda with auto parts have struck and successfully won large wage increases. Other strikes have followed, and firms have often been quick to compromise.

-James Saft is a Reuters columnist. The opinions expressed are his own-
With employment weak and consumer credit weaker, look for extended official measures to support the U.S. economy.

Recent data show that despite emerging glimmers in manufacturing, de-stocking having reached its limit, and some strong showings globally, the U.S. recovery is far from self-sustaining.

With Congress serving as an effective roadblock to a comprehensively expanding fiscal stimulus, the heavy lifting, if any is to be done, may fall on monetary policy and “off balance sheet” forms of stimulus.

– Wei Gu is a Reuters columnist. The opinions expressed are her own –

While China has been outspoken in expressing concern about the United States printing too much money, those worries might be better focused at home. No country beats China when it comes to effective monetary easing.

Beijing has scrapped lending quotas, adopted a loose monetary policy and kept interest rates at a four-year low to boost liquidity and promote growth. The policy has worked. China has lent out more money in the first four months of this year than the whole of 2008. Money growth in China is up more than 25 percent this year, versus about 10 percent in the United States.  Click here for a related graph.

– Wei Gu is a Reuters columnist. The opinions expressed are her own –

Abundant liquidity, government support and a strong yuan fueled Chinese companies’ overseas buying spree.

But since they went out at the peak of the market and did not have a clear strategy for acquisitions, it should come as no surprise that most of those deals have turned sour. Once bitten, twice shy.

– Scott Paul is executive director of the Alliance for American Manufacturing (AAM), a labor-management partnership of several leading U.S. manufacturers and the United Steelworkers. The views expressed are his own. —

Barack Obama knows the story of American manufacturing firsthand. He cut his political teeth as a community organizer on the South Side of Chicago in the shadow of shuttered steel mills, working to salvage hopes and dreams that had been crushed by the weight of layoffs and economic decline. As President, he can authoritatively recall America’s industrial heritage and decline, but more importantly, Obama can lead the nation to a renaissance in American manufacturing.

Manufacturing has boosted the American economy, jobs, and wages for generations dating back to World War II. Recently, it has fallen on very hard times. Nearly one in four manufacturing jobs has vanished since 2000, and 40,000 factories have closed since 1998. Last year, manufacturing accounted for nearly a third of all lost jobs in the U.S., while factory orders plummeted to record lows.

– John Kemp is a Reuters columnist. The views expressed are his own –

The global slowdown is hitting China’s modern manufacturing base in Guangdong province especially hard. Deputy governor Huang Longyun on Thursday warned a news conference “the situation is grim” and the manufacturing hub around Pearl River Delta is bearing the brunt of China’s slowdown.

Guangdong’s burgeoning factories have supplied most of the cheap manufactured items flooding world markets in the last five years. They have also been the source of most of the marginal demand for crude oil, refined products and other raw materials. The province’s slowdown will therefore have profound effects on global markets and prices in 2009.