The conventional wisdom about the decline in American manufacturing jobs is that automation is to blame—“Most US manufacturing jobs lost to technology, not trade,” a Financial Times headline claims. Similarly, a December New York Times article self-assuredly states, “The Long-Term Jobs Killer Is Not China. It’s Automation,” as does CNN Money in its article, “Rise of the machines: Fear robots, not China or Mexico.”
This assessment of the state of U.S. manufacturing rests on two statistics that seem to be in tension. First, employment in U.S. manufacturing has plunged, down 30 percent since 2000. Secondly, manufacturing output has held steady […]
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