Spotlight on employment
Posted 07:04 a.m., May 2, 2008
Stock markets worldwide were mostly higher overnight following Thursday’s solid advance on Wall Street. The dollar continued to firm against other major currencies on a widespread view that the Federal Reserve may have finished making interest rate cuts for the time being. Gold and oil correspondingly edged lower.
The average price of a gallon of regular unleaded gasoline also edged lower this morning, for the first time in weeks, to $3.491. That’s down from $3.515 yesterday, $3.154 a month ago and $2.794 a year ago.
The economic statistic du jour is the government’s April employment report, due for release today at 8:30 a.m. Analysts on average expect a decline of 75,000 in the number of people employed and a 0.1 percentage point rise in the unemployment rate.
This is as good an excuse as any for me to launch into another of my lectures about the blindingly obvious. Today’s topic: The Disappearance of Manufacturing in the United States.
Here’s the evidence:
Even seven decades ago, the services sector employed a larger percentage of Americans than manufacturing. World War II created an anomaly by drawing more workers into manufacturing, specifically in the manufacture of war materiel. After the war, the ratio shifted back toward services.
Or should I say “the low-paying services sector”? Well, no. Although that’s the usual offhand knock, it’s necessary to point out that “services” includes doctors and lawyers and all sorts of other highly paid professionals. But yes, it also includes the person who clears the crockery off your restaurant table or rakes up your fallen leaves.
The most recent several years may not be clear in the chart above, so here’s a closer look at the trends since 1990:
Yes, folks, according to government statistics, more people in the United States today (since late last summer, in fact) are working in government than in manufacturing. I guess it’s nice that someone is giving people jobs, but you do have to wonder if what those government employees are doing is as useful as the work done by the manufacturing workers whose jobs have disappeared.
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