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Tag Archives: labor

Those Stubborn Facts: When U.S. Immigration Bottomed, Unions Peaked

04 Thursday Oct 2018

Posted by Alan Tonelson in Those Stubborn Facts

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immigrants, Immigration, labor, Population Reference Bureau, The New Republic, Those Stubborn Facts, unions


“American labor’s peak decade”: the 1930s

—The New Republic, October 2, 2018

Decade during which legal immigration into the U.S. bottomed*: the 1930s

—Population Reference Bureau, May 9, 2014

*since the 1830s


(Sources: “America’s Missing Labor Party,” by David Sessions, The New Republic, October 2, 2018, https://newrepublic.com/article/151119/americas-missing-labor-party-book-review-erik-loomis-history-ten-strikes; “Trends in Migration to the U.S.,” by Philip Martin, Population Reference Bureau, May 9, 2014, https://www.prb.org/us-migration-trends/)

Those Stubborn Facts: Tight U.S. Labor Markets?

09 Friday Feb 2018

Posted by Alan Tonelson in Those Stubborn Facts

≈ 2 Comments

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Bureau of Labor Statistics, Great Recession, Jobs, labor, strikes, Those Stubborn Facts, unions, work stoppages

Number of Major U.S. Work Stoppages*, 2017: 7

Number of Years Since 1947** with Fewer Such Stoppages: 1

The Year with Fewest Such Stoppages: 2009 (Great Recession)

*Defined as events “involving 1,000 or more workers and lasting at least one shift.”

** Starting date of this Bureau of Labor Statistics series.

(Source: “Major Work Stoppages in 2017,” News Release USDL-18-0206, Bureau of Labor Statistics, U.S. Department of Labor, February 9, 2018, https://www.bls.gov/news.release/pdf/wkstp.pdf )

Im-Politic: The Day After, Part II

10 Thursday Nov 2016

Posted by Alan Tonelson in Im-Politic

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2016 election, African Americans, Bernie Sanders, consumer confidence, Democrats, Elizabeth Warren, exit polls, Hillary Clinton, Hispanics, Im-Politic, labor, NAFTA, polls, TPP, Trade, trade laws, Trans-Pacific Partnership, Trump, white working class

It’s the day after the day after in America, and I’m still stupefied by the advent of the Age of Trump. I have absolutely no inside info on what to expect in the way of policy recommendations from the transition team or the new administration, so I’ll be just as eager as anyone for the hints and trial balloons to emerge.

But continuing with the theme of yesterday’s post, I believe it is possible to identify some important questions that major actors in American politics – and the voters they’ll keep trying to reach – will need to grapple with. Let’s focus today on the Democrats and their allies and constituencies, since they face the most obvious challenges:

>At least one piece of the conventional wisdom about Hillary Clinton’s failings strikes me as being right on target – especially since the emails exposed by Wikileaks make clear that her senior advisers spotted it as well: She never developed a clear, compelling positive message.

It’s not that “Stronger together” isn’t a positive idea, and no doubt had some appeal at a time of deep national division. But this slogan begs the question “Stronger together to where?” Regularly, Clinton suggested that she meant “to the 1990s,” when her husband was president. Many Americans – particularly in the chattering classes – do indeed view the period as a time of unprecedented prosperity along with peace. To many others, however – especially in working class precincts – the decade evoked memories of job-killing trade agreements like NAFTA. And of course many others were reminded of a string of scandals, both real and alleged.

In fact, I’d take the critique of Clinton’s message one step further. Even though her campaign website and many of her speeches were filled with any number of specific proposals, they were quickly replaced on the campaign trail, and especially in her ads, by a non-stop assault on Trump’s character and qualifications for the Oval Office. Clinton’s defeat strongly indicates that you can’t beat even a deeply flawed something with nothing.

>In fairness to Clinton, however, her messaging problems might have been related to a genuine quandary she faced. Democrats have styled themselves, and often acted like, the Party of the Common Man. As I and others have written, when it comes to issues like trade, demographic changes in Democrats’ ranks seem to be clashing with this relatively populist identity, and Tuesday night’s results indisputably show that the party has the majority of the white working class.

Indeed, according to the preliminary evidence, Clinton’s performance among union voters was feeble by the standards of recent Democratic presidential candidates – despite labor leaders’ vehement opposition to Trump. And keep in mind that nearly half of this electoral bloc is comprised of government workers, who naturally tend to favor the freer spending Democrats. As a result, Clinton’s backing from members of private sector unions was probably much weaker still.

So the Democrats face a fundamental choice, and it could well have rhetorically crippled an undecided Clinton. Will they turn their backs on private sector union members, possibly also in the belief that America’s changing population profile is steadily reducing their political importance? Or despite the gulf between private sector union workers and younger, better educated Democrats on issues like trade (along perhaps with immigration and those amorphous but crucial cultural and values issues), will they try to bring them back?

>Nonetheless, major Democratic constituencies and their leaders – including the unions and the party’s progressive wing – still loudly oppose America’s current approach to trade. But as mentioned above, they’ve been almost hysterically anti-Trump, to the point of incoherence.

If they’re serious about overhauling trade policy, it’s time for these folks to wake up and turn the partisanship down. They’ll soon be getting a president who supports most of their major and longstanding trade positions, including opposing the Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP), sanctioning China for currency manipulation, rewriting NAFTA, and using U.S. trade law more energetically to fight predatory foreign practices.

Working with Mr. Trump, they can achieve these goals. Remaining in spiteful high dudgeon could doom reforms they’ve sought literally for decades. Statements by Senators Bernie Sanders and Elizabeth Warren, and from organized labor, are promising signs that these progressive leaders are open to cooperation with the incoming Chief Executive. Assuming that these declarations are serious, it’s time for the rest of the movement to fall in line and recognize that for the first time in modern U.S. history, the White House looks to be on their side.

>Finally (for now), nothing could be clearer about the 2016 election returns than the serious flaws they’ve revealed in the so-called science of polling. But politically focused surveys aren’t the only soundings apparently needing major surgery. Many of the best known economic surveys arguably were way off base as well.

For example, many polls – including this week’s exit polls – show strong public support for some form of legalization for illegal immigrants. Can this finding be reconciled with Mr. Trump’s win? Other surveys have revealed a notable warming of Americans’ views of free trade and recent trade agreements. That’s also hard to square with this week’s actual results – and would have been even had Mr. Trump lost by a respectable margin.

Also deserving of greater scrutiny – surveys of consumer and other forms of economic confidence. They have strongly tended to show significant improvement since the depths of the last recession, which isn’t hard to understand. But even their general claims of a simple return to pre-recession levels or, in some cases, better, ring false in light of this week’s voting.

One possible explanation is the gap identified by some researchers between rising optimism by African-Americans and Hispanics and the more downbeat views of whites. But if so, why did Trump fare much better among the latter than widely predicted, and why did he best 2012 Republican nominee Mitt Romney with both groups even though the economy was considerably weaker four years ago?

I can’t emphasize enough, however, how tentative my observations are, and how long my (and so many other) questions will defy confident answers. My only certainty so far is that election night this week was the most important historic event I’ve ever experienced. (I was born at the end of 1953.) I just wish I knew whether for good or ill.

(What’s Left of) Our Economy: Grossly Inflated Claims of Wage Inflation

13 Wednesday Jan 2016

Posted by Alan Tonelson in (What's Left of) Our Economy

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blue-collar workers, labor, wage inflation, wages, White-collar workers, workers, {What's Left of) Our Economy

I suppose that if you look at the shortest possible time frame, you can make a respectable case that wages in America are finally showing or soon will show long-awaited signs of life – as so many analysts keep contending. Trouble is, that’s the only way that the case for wage pickup can be made – and even those short-run data are problematic.

As always, the monthly jobs report released by the Labor Department last Friday also provided the latest wage (December) figures for the American workforce before adjusting for inflation. (The inflation-adjusted data is scheduled to come out on the 20th.) Although the figure will be revised, Labor reported that current dollar wages for the entire private sector rose 2.52 percent year-on-year. As the graph below shows, that was indeed the best such improvement since these data began to be tracked (which is only since 2009).

Yet as several observers have pointed out, this December-to-December comparison looks to be unsustainably juiced by a terrible wage performance in December, 2014 – which made the December, 2015 rise look that much bigger. For what it’s worth, few expect these easy comparisons to continue.

It’s also important to remember that sizable minimum wage increases kicked in last year in 23 states and the District of Columbia. So a fair portion of the wage advance had nothing to do with the natural strength of U.S. labor markets, and everything to with politicians’ decisions.

Longer-term data is available for workers whose jobs are described as “non-supervisory” and “production.” Think of this as the blue-collar workforce – i.e., those workers who depend on wages rather than salaries, bonuses, and other forms of non-benefits pay. (Often their benefits aren’t so great, either, but that’s another story.) And here’s where the wage recovery story breaks down.

Here’s how blue-collar wages have changed year-on-year before inflation since 2009-10 – the maximum time-frame available for the entire private sector.

 

Obviously, these workers have enjoyed much less progress than their white-collar counterparts, even though their 2.41 percent 2014-15 increase was also their best since 2009-10.

Go back further, though, with blue-collar wages, and you see how feebly these non-supervisory wages have been growing for literally decades. The graph below shows the annual percentage increases since 1980. And yes, you’re permitted to react with a “Yuck”!

In other words, there’s been no acceleration of wage inflation since the late-1980s.

At the same time, as I’ve written repeatedly, the most valid way to judge economic trends over time is not according to completely arbitrary, economically meaningless units like calendar years, but according to periods of economic expansion and contraction. So do those numbers provide any support for the wage inflation thesis? Anything but. Here’s how they look for non-supervisory workers for all the economic recoveries since Ronald Reagan became president.

“Reagan recovery,” Dec. 1982-June 1990  (c. 7.5 years) +27.18% 

“Clinton recovery,” Apr. 1991-Feb. 2001 (c. 10 years)  +37.38% 

“George W. Bush recovery,” Dec. 2001 to Nov. 2007 (c. 6 years) +19.59%

“Obama recovery,” June 2009-present (6.5 yeaes) +14.27% 

They demonstrate that although the current expansion isn’t yet especially long by recent standards, its blue-collar wage increases have been by far the weakest.  In other words, if there’s anything that’s increasingly inflating about the American wage scene, it’s claims or accelerating wage inflation.

(What’s Left of) Our Economy: Few Signs of Real Recovery in the JOLTS Labor Data

12 Wednesday Aug 2015

Posted by Alan Tonelson in Uncategorized

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hiring, job openings, job quality, Jobs, JOLTS, labor, recovery, {What's Left of) Our Economy

It was JOLTS report day today, and because it’s one of Federal Reserve Chair Janet Yellen’s favorite measures of labor market health (she’s a labor market specialist), it’s always worth scrutinizing closely. As usual, most of the commentary generated by this monthly survey of job openings and labor turnover (including hiring and quitting activity) focused on how many positions employers say they’re looking to fill. (The latest June figure fell a bit month to month, but it’s still at near-record levels.) And as usual, I’m more focused on where these figures are changing within the labor market – because to heal meaningfully, the economy needs not simply more jobs, but more good jobs.

Discouragingly, the June report shows that high and rising levels of the employment opportunities offered by this economy are still coming in the kinds of low-pay, dead end sectors few parents would hope their children stay in – if they enter them at all. More and more of the new jobs are also found in what I call the government-subsidized private sector – parts of the economy that aren’t formally owned by the government, but where hiring (and other performance measures) are heavily influenced by government largesse. Health care services is the major example here.

According to these Labor Department data, 32.79 percent of job openings posted in June were in three low-wage sectors: retail trade, leisure and hospitality, and the poor-paying segments within a larger category called professional and business services. (Workers in these less-than-choice jobs range from clerical personnel and janitors to call center and telemarketing employees to security guards.) And actually, this figure is conservative, since many other broad sectors of the labor market include their own low-paying sub-sectors.

For comparisons’ sake, when the last recession technically started, in December, 2007, these low-wage openings accounted for 30.46 percent of all listed job openings. The percentage dipped to 29.48 in June, 2009, when the current recovery technically began, but then rebounded to 32.34 last June. One year later, we learned today, it’s higher still.

In addition, the portion of America’s private sector still predominantly influenced by market forces keeps generating ever smaller shares of the nation’s job openings. When the recession supposedly began, the subsidized private sector accounted for 17.74 percent of all new openings. At the recovery’s onset, this figure rose all the way up to 21.98 percent – reflecting the health care services sector’s unique employment resilience during the downturn and its immediate aftermath.

As the “real” private sector regained its job-creation momentum, the prominence of subsidized job openings faded – to 17.30 percent last June. But by this June, the new Labor Department report shows, it was back up to 18.86 percent.

If you’re fine more than half of America’s new employment opportunities being created by parts of the economy that either pay poorly or rely on government subsidies, you’ll be cheering the new JOLTS numbers. If you think they’re a dubious foundation for enduring prosperity, you’ll recognize them as yet another sign that, despite a low overall headline unemployment rate, the U.S. Labor market and the broader economy remain a long way from health.

(What’s Left of) Our Economy: More Thoughts on the Fast Track Trade Vote – Including Where Hillary Now Stands

14 Sunday Jun 2015

Posted by Alan Tonelson in (What's Left of) Our Economy

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2016 elections, AFL-CIO, African Americans, boardroom liberalism, CBC, Congressional Black Caucus, fast track, Gregory Meeks, Hillary Clinton, House of Representatives, labor, manufacturing, Nancy Pelosi, Obama, TPA, TPP, Trade, Trade Promotion Authority, Trans-Pacific Partnership, {What's Left of) Our Economy

Yesterday, I posted some observations about the big vote in the House of Representatives on Friday that dealt a body blow to President Obama’s hopes for fast track authority to negotiate trade agreements like his proposed Pacific Rim deal. Today, let’s focus on three of some of the domestic political implications.

>The trade-related political issue of the moment seems to be why Hillary Clinton has failed to either endorse or oppose the White House’s request for fast track, which would prevent Congress from making any changes to trade deals brought before it. Therefore, it greatly increases the odds of their passage, since Congress historically has been reluctant to hand presidents outright foreign policy-related defeats.

Now, just as I’ve been finishing this post, news has come out that Clinton has made the following statement on trade policy: “The president should listen to and work with his allies in Congress starting with Nancy Pelosi, who have expressed their concerns about the impact that a weak agreement would have on our workers to make sure we get the best strongest deal possible. And if we don’t get it, there should be no deal.”

This position contains some significant changes, but still looks like an exercise in political needle-threading. On the one hand, Clinton has already – vaguely – insisted that the Pacific Rim trade agreement (the Trans-Pacific Partnership, or TPP) “must increase jobs, must increase wages, must give us more economic competitive power.” She has added that the TPP must contain strong health and environmental rules, and “address” currency manipulation. That sounds pretty critical, though she’s claimed that she can’t make a final decision since the negotiations are still ongoing.

On the other hand, as noted above, support for fast track will greatly increase TPP’s eventual chances of Congressional passage. And although her new reference to House Democratic leader Pelosi suggests opposition to this measure – given the latter’s crucial “No” vote Friday on a politically related worker assistance program – lots of political wiggle-room remains.

Clinton’s reluctance to take a definitive fast track position is especially striking given her evident desire to shore up her support with the increasingly left-of-center Democratic party base, which of course punches above its weight during primary season, and whose enthusiasm is usually crucial for general election success. It would be easy to conclude, therefore, that the former Secretary of State and New York Senator actually supports the president’s trade agenda, and simply doesn’t want to alienate the faithful.

Yet there’s still room for doubt as to her views. After all, everything else about Clinton’s campaign strategy points to confidence that her strong front-runner status will last, and that the party has no real alternative for the nomination. If so, how difficult would it be for her to frankly acknowledge the difference with the base over trade policy, and ask Democrats to focus on all the areas of agreement?

Perhaps she’s worried about the enthusiasm factor in the fall of 2016? That concern, however, seems to overlook the reality that much of the strong partisanship developed in the Democratic base for so long has been based on demonizing most Republicans. (The opposite is of course true as well.) So it wouldn’t seem to be inordinately difficult for skilled political operatives like Clinton and her advisers to stoke those partisan emotions during the general campaign.

Even if her strategy is to win in November by tacking toward the middle after winning the nomination (which is pretty standard operating procedure for most presidential hopefuls), it’s still hard to believe that committed Democrats are going to stay home in significant numbers and risk electing a Republican who no doubt will strongly oppose most of their other economic and hot-button social policy goals (e.g., at least maintaining the national abortion status quo).

Finally, whatever the fate of fast track this week or next, it’s certain that trade issues will remain campaign issues through the next presidential election. If Mr. Obama’s trade agenda dies, the next president will need to explain what he or she would replace it with. If it survives, then it’s likely that the talks TPP negotiations will continue, and that a deal will either be concluded sometime in the next few months, or continue approaching. So Clinton can’t duck this issue forever.

My bottom line (based on zero inside information!) is that Clinton does in fact favor fast track and something very close to the current trade agenda, and that she’s trying to temporize as long possible to attract as much campaign funding as she can from social and partly economically liberal Wall Street-ers and Silicon Valley executives who nonetheless strongly favor offshoring-focused trade policies. In other words, she’s trying to run as what New York Times reporter Noam Scheiber has insightfully called a “boardroom liberal.”

>The AFL-CIO’s role in crippling hopes for fast track was decisive, and the labor federation has won (so far) in large part because it started playing hard ball. In particular, earlier this year, the AFL threatened to fund primary challenges to Democratic lawmakers who supported fast track and the rest of the Obama trade agenda. This decision was especially important given labor’s previous record in trade policy battles.

The union movement has strongly and rightly opposed the longstanding trade policy status quo, and lobbied energetically and often effectively against it. Indeed, labor has always been able to provide the lion’s share of the money and ground troops needed by any successful advocacy effort. But when it came to trying to force Democrats to pay a political price for dissenting, the AFL and others typically demurred – and precisely due to the kinds of extreme partisan beliefs alluded to above. Labor, moreover, has had good reason for such partisanship, given the strongly anti-union turn taken by Republicans for the last quarter century. Nonetheless, the price labor paid was marginalization on trade issues. Democratic politicians who favored trade agreements knew they could ignore the unions with impunity.

You can tell how dramatic labor’s shift this year has been by checking out the whining it occasioned from Democratic Members of Congress. (By the way, when’s the last time you heard an American politician complain about the heat he or she has taken from the business-dominated offshoring lobby on trade or any other issues?)

But win or lose, now that the actual crucial trade votes are being taken, and the record is becoming clear, it’s up to labor to take the next step and follow through on its threats. Unless the legislation changes qualitatively, members of the House and Senate who have supported the fast track bill need to be challenged by generously funded, labor-backed candidates who promise to support major changes in U.S. trade policy.

As Machiavelli and many other great political thinkers have written, anyone who attacks the king had better kill him. The only exceptions that arguably might be made are lawmakers whose states or districts have been clear winners from trade. You can get a pretty good idea of who they are by comparing the Wall Street Journal and Economic Policy Institute data sets on which I based this recent post.

>It was very encouraging to see only six legislators in the Congressional Black Caucus (which numbers 45 House Members and one Senator) vote for renewal of the TAA program – and thus for the Obama trade agenda. As you might recall from this post, one of those six – New York Democrat Gregory Meeks tried to make the argument that much opposition to the president on trade, especially from Republicans, was race based. How great to see the vast majority of his CBC colleagues reject this demagoguery, and instead vote the economics. They have made abundantly clear how African-American workers in the trade-heavy manufacturing sector have been victimized along with the rest of the nation and economy by today’s fatally flawed U.S. approach to international commerce.

Finally, for your convenience, here’s the official roll call for that crucial worker assistance (Trade Adjustment Assistance, or TAA) vote on Friday that put President Obama’s trade agenda on life support.  

 

(What’s Left of) Our Economy: A Flawed Basis for “Over-Priced” China Hopes

17 Tuesday Feb 2015

Posted by Alan Tonelson in (What's Left of) Our Economy

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advanced manufacturing, Boston Consulting Group, China, developing countries, economic development, labor, labor-intensive manufacturing, Lewis Point, manufacturing, manufacturing renaissance, Obama, productivity, W. Arthur Lewis, wages, {What's Left of) Our Economy

Quick – how many of you have heard of the Lewis point? Not a clue? Don’t worry – you’re not alone. Even most supposedly serious economic analysts seem unacquainted with it. At the same time, it’s difficult to talk realistically about patterns of Chinese and U.S. industrial competitiveness without keeping it in mind, along with its significant weaknesses, and the release of a new report about China’s labor force is a great occasion to examine its significance.

The Lewis point – named after the prominent development economist Sir W. Arthur Lewis – is the hypothetical stage of a country’s economic evolution at which its supply of excess labor shrinks enough to start pushing wages up. As a result, it’s the dominant theory in economics explaining how low-income third world countries with major labor surpluses nowadays can plausibly hope to become much higher income countries.

I’ve always been somewhat skeptical of the Lewis notion, mainly because the labor surpluses in developing countries have been so vast, and incomes so incredibly low. Indeed, my book The Race to the Bottom cited third world labor gluts as features of the global economy with such staying power that they would be instrumental in ensuring that world trade flows would long remain lopsided to the detriment of workers in developed countries, and global financial stability.

More recently, the Lewis point has shaped much recent thinking about global manufacturing’s future, and especially about the outlook for the United States and China – even though few of these thinkers have mentioned Lewis’ ideas. In particular, U.S. manufacturing cheerleaders like President Obama and the Boston Consulting Group have predicted that lots of industrial activity will move from China to the United States largely because labor shortages there are already driving wages too high to justify its current levels of production. In other words, the Lewis theory looks like it’s playing out right now in the PRC.

As I’ve written exhaustively, these claims of rising Chinese wages are full of serious problems. (The new China labor report claims to have spotted another one.) One rising-China-wages problem I haven’t discussed, however, stems from a big flaw in the Lewis point theory that would weaken it even if one could document the kinds of Lewis-ian wage hikes that the cheerleaders claim to be seeing. Lewis’ ideas arguably make sense outside sectors of an economy exposed to international trade, like services. But since trade is crucial to developing countries’ growth – because, by definition their domestic markets lack the wealth needed to create anything like the employment opportunities they need – relevance to trade should make or break the Lewish theorem. And here’s why it doesn’t seem able to hold long enough to matter.

In developing countries making their way in a world with robust trade – and full of surplus labor – overly generous pay in the labor-intensive industries in which economic development naturally starts will indeed reduce the competitiveness of their manufacturing. But events don’t then simply come to a screeching halt. One of three manufacturing-related developments – or some combination of them – can be expected next, at least if the rest of economics has any validity. (Of course, as with all economics theorizing, these scenarios depend at least in part on other factors holding more or less constant.)

Possibility one is that so much competitiveness is lost that jobs in those globally exposed sectors dry up, surplus labor starts to emerge once more, and wages start sagging again. Possibility two is that employers do what they do everywhere else in the world to cope with scarce labor – they automate, or become more efficient in other ways, and either replace labor with capital and technology, or raise their productivity, or do both. And possibility three is that these countries use capital and technology to move into more advanced industries.

China specifically seems to be climbing the technology ladder quite rapidly, as evidenced by its production of ever more advanced manufactures. But the nation still hosts a large labor-intensive manufacturing sector, and its struggles appear to be in part behind China’s growth slowdown.

It’s true that, in principle, because low-income countries are poor, their businesses might lack the access to capital and technology to take these steps. In practice, though, many foreign investors have been happy to help out, and many third world governments (notably in Asia) access the capital from their own populations through economic policies that promote saving and discourage consumption. Intellectual property theft, or forced technology transfers, have aided many (mainly Asian) countries, too.

It’s also true that not all national business establishments in globally exposed sectors will be smart enough to make these adjustments, or fast enough to re-attract from more promising sectors whatever workers they need. But at least some will, and they’ll become the new manufacturing winners until others start coping as or more successfully, or come up with superior alternative approaches.

Incidentally, these Lewis point shortcomings also explain why hopes for significant wage increases in U.S.-based manufacturing (which, to their credit, the manufacturing cheerleaders like President Obama have not predicted) appear misplaced. Although it’s difficult to know the tipping points in various manufacturing sectors, no one can reasonably doubt that they exist. If they’re ever passed strongly enough and long enough (a development that looks pretty far-fetched for now), offshoring to much lower wage countries will start looking just as attractive as in the past. Moreover, as made clear by China’s inroads into advanced manufacturing, the productivity gains that will be needed to offset these wage increases will need to be genuinely historic – a sobering thought at a time when manufacturing’s productivity growth has been slowing.

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Current Thoughts on Trade

Terence P. Stewart

Protecting U.S. Workers

Marc to Market

So Much Nonsense Out There, So Little Time....

Alastair Winter

Chief Economist at Daniel Stewart & Co - Trying to make sense of Global Markets, Macroeconomics & Politics

Smaulgld

Real Estate + Economics + Gold + Silver

Reclaim the American Dream

So Much Nonsense Out There, So Little Time....

Mickey Kaus

Kausfiles

David Stockman's Contra Corner

Washington Decoded

So Much Nonsense Out There, So Little Time....

Upon Closer inspection

Keep America At Work

Sober Look

So Much Nonsense Out There, So Little Time....

Credit Writedowns

Finance, Economics and Markets

GubbmintCheese

So Much Nonsense Out There, So Little Time....

VoxEU.org: Recent Articles

So Much Nonsense Out There, So Little Time....

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