Rustbelt Recovery

Sheldon

Senior Member
Apr 2, 2010
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Manufacturing: Rustbelt recovery | The Economist


At first I was all excited...

For the first time in many years, American manufacturing is doing better than the rest of the economy. Manufacturing output tumbled 15% over the course of the recession, from December 2007 to the end of June 2009. Since then it has recovered two-thirds of that drop; production is now just 5% below its peak level (see chart 1).

Factory employment has been slower to recover than output, since productivity has risen. Nonetheless, that too is growing. In February factory payrolls rose by 33,000 from January. In the past year manufacturing employment has gone up by 189,000, or 1.6%, the biggest gain since the late 1990s. Total employment rose just 1% in that period. Unemployment has fallen more sharply than the national average in Illinois, Ohio and Michigan, which are relatively dependent on manufacturing.



but then I was like, oh:

Yet the notion that jobs may flood back from abroad seems a fantasy. Caterpillar added 19,008 employees (excluding acquisitions) last year; 60% of those were overseas. Like most multinationals, Caterpillar prefers to produce where it sells. Last year sales to Asia rose 43%, and to Latin America 58%, compared with 30% for North America. As long as emerging markets are growing fastest, that’s where the bulk of new manufacturing jobs are likely to go.
 
Brazil and China are headed for recession/inflation later this year so I think The Economist is being pessimistic and conservative.
 
Granny says is `cause nobody gots the money to buy a house `cept dem rich folks dat don't pay their fair share o' taxes...
:eusa_eh:
NYT: No sign of recovery for new home builders
4/23/2011 - With sales down 80 percent since 2005, analysts expect long-term changes in behavior
In this distant Chicago suburb, a builder has finally found a way to persuade people to buy a new house: he throws in a car. Kim Meier’s spring promotion, which includes a $17,000 credit at a nearby General Motors dealer, has produced seven sales since the beginning of March, a veritable windfall of business for a builder who sold only 20 houses last year. “We needed to do something dramatic,” said Mr. Meier. “The market’s been soft.”

That is one way of putting it. The recession hurt a lot of industries, but it knocked the residential construction market to the mat and has kept it there, even as the broader economy has started to fitfully recover. Sales of new single-family homes in February were down more than 80 percent from the 2005 peak, far exceeding the 28 percent drop in existing home sales. New single-family sales are now lower than at any point since the data was first collected in 1963, when the nation had 120 million fewer residents.

Builders and analysts say a long-term shift in behavior seems to be under way. Instead of wanting the biggest and the newest, even if it requires a long commute, buyers now demand something smaller, cheaper and, thanks to $4-a-gallon gas, as close to their jobs as possible. That often means buying a home out of foreclosure from a bank. Four out of 10 sales of existing homes are foreclosures or otherwise distressed properties. Builders like Mr. Meier who specialize in putting up entire neighborhoods on a city’s outskirts — Richmond is some 50 miles northwest of downtown Chicago — cannot compete despite chopping prices.

MORE
 
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Lew Rockwell had a piece today about modern day ghost towns. They were all tourist destinations in the Northeast
 
Manufacturing: Rustbelt recovery | The Economist


At first I was all excited...

For the first time in many years, American manufacturing is doing better than the rest of the economy. Manufacturing output tumbled 15% over the course of the recession, from December 2007 to the end of June 2009. Since then it has recovered two-thirds of that drop; production is now just 5% below its peak level (see chart 1).

Factory employment has been slower to recover than output, since productivity has risen. Nonetheless, that too is growing. In February factory payrolls rose by 33,000 from January. In the past year manufacturing employment has gone up by 189,000, or 1.6%, the biggest gain since the late 1990s. Total employment rose just 1% in that period. Unemployment has fallen more sharply than the national average in Illinois, Ohio and Michigan, which are relatively dependent on manufacturing.



but then I was like, oh:

Yet the notion that jobs may flood back from abroad seems a fantasy. Caterpillar added 19,008 employees (excluding acquisitions) last year; 60% of those were overseas. Like most multinationals, Caterpillar prefers to produce where it sells. Last year sales to Asia rose 43%, and to Latin America 58%, compared with 30% for North America. As long as emerging markets are growing fastest, that’s where the bulk of new manufacturing jobs are likely to go.

And what, pray tell, does your comments/post have to do with the steel belt?

I bet you're right about one thing ... I bet we sold 43% of our jobs to Asia, and 58% of our jobs to Latin America. Vote for O blah blah again please. He needs 4 more years to sell out the rest of the US.

With your and people like you's support.

You socialists make me sick. I can't wipe my own ass. Big Brother needs to do it for me. Pussies.
 
And what, pray tell, does your comments/post have to do with the steel belt?

I bet you're right about one thing ... I bet we sold 43% of our jobs to Asia, and 58% of our jobs to Latin America. Vote for O blah blah again please. He needs 4 more years to sell out the rest of the US.

With your and people like you's support.

You socialists make me sick. I can't wipe my own ass. Big Brother needs to do it for me. Pussies.

Then go to the romper room, chimpy.

It's not just Obama. This has been going on systemically for at least the past two decades and is the logical step in globalizing free enterprise. Those percentages were for the new jobs created overseas to meet overseas demand; we didn't "sell" them. Why would a company build a tractor here only to sell it in India, when the capital, land, and labor are all cheaper in India anyways? They build where they sell. And you whine about the socialist because of this? :lol: Stop drinking so many martinis before posting.
 

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