Increase in service jobs is a sign of economic growth, unemployment is 4.6% lowest since 2007. Decrease in manufacturing jobs is "mostly" attributed to more automation in the factories and plants. This is going to increase with Robotics ready to pretty much "invade" the workforce ranks. Trumps promise of bring US jobs back from China and Mexico is a SHAM. He plans to print money to throw at infrastructure related jobs to repair roads and bridges etc. and say he created jobs. Trump will also bring in more "dictatorial/oppresive" powers to the White House to control the general population. Burn a Flag and lost your citizenship type laws. This all is in preparation to "manage" the angry crowds at the times when he pilots the US treasury towards a "Debt Default" to force the creditors to "restructure" the debt or get the stick of hyper inflated dollars worth pennies vrs the real value. In that process, there will be severe crashes in the bond markets and thus stock markets, severe cost cutting and efficiency measures called out by creditors to handle country's finances, restructuring of US geopolitical alliances (NATO members pay or lose protection) etc. Majority of population will lose lots of their savings and will be an angry bunch as a result. The sad part is this is all avoidable: US has savings available in healthcare, defense, welfare schemes, foreign aid, lots of illegal immigrants leaving and Americans doing their jobs for 20% more pay etc. However, these are "hard pills" to take. Trump being a billionaire should not worry about second term or image and is in a position to take bold decisions to help the US in the long run. Wonder why per capita healthcare costs in US are nearly $10K vrs $4K average of other western nations. This means nearly $3T is used up in healthcare. This also means some cost efficiencies can free up $1.5T easily to be put into other industries without printing the dollars and further stressing the financial house and eroding the savings and future of the middle class folks.
They are millionaires from South America, Russia, the Middle East and Far East, you can add a few illegal Mexicans into the mix too.
That many foreign millionaires in the US we need 570,000 waitpersons to serve them? "Illegal Mexican millionaires"? That's GREAT! They'll be spending lots of money rather than sucking tit on the American tax payer's social security net.
But manufacturing output is at all time highs: https://fred.stlouisfed.org/series/OUTMS Automation and production efficiencies have kept manufacturing employment low.
But manufacturing output is at all time highs: _____________________________________________________________________________ Interesting - looks like productivity went up as employment went down. The robotics & AI can make this possible.
Yup. America still produces more the China (though it's neck and neck now vs 30 years ago when it was like 100x)
What does engineering have to do with Manufacturing and Waiting? Engineering requires at least 4 years of rigorous schooling and often more in the form of a masters. Manufacturing requires a highschool diploma on the low end and trade school on the high end. Waiting is closer to manufacturing than manufacturing is to engineering and his point is that for that segment of the population Waiting is growning (which is considered a poor quality job) and manufacturing is not (which is considered a higher quality job). Bringing the concept of high end engineers is a straw man argument to banjo's point. Why not mention anesthesiologists or Wall Street exotic derivatives traders (some of whom make 1000x more than a typical waiter)? Further, given your background in the military (where you probably saw people from all walks of life) and then your background at an elite MBA program, I would figure you would appreciate the opportunities that some people are born into and few other people are capable of obtaining. The new aristocracy is education. I don't like Zerohedge so I didn't read the article. I think the statistic highlights how hard it will be to bring manufacturing jobs back to this country (for some of the reasons you pointed out and some of the reasons I pointed out) but if it's doable, that would be more desirable than having a bunch of waiters working 15 hours a week to satisfy the needs of the 100 Apple engineers who designed the iphone.