I know that over the last 30-40 years many factory jobs or union jobs in the US were lost to outsourcing, and I know that today many car companies and other manufacturers get cheaper labor by opening factories in other countries. My question is, why did this all happen in one giant wave around the same time? Did some kind of law/regulation change to make this more doable for companies? Or is it just because the world became more globalized in general?
In: Economics
>why did this all happen in one giant wave around the same time?
It didn’t.
[https://fred.stlouisfed.org/series/MANEMP](https://fred.stlouisfed.org/series/MANEMP)
As you can see, the total number of manufacturing employees stayed about the same from the mid-60’s to the early 2000’s. But the population of the country grew about 50% during that time period, so that really represents a slow, steady decline.
Then, from about 2000 to 2010, we see a much sharper decrease. This was a time of technological breakthroughs in automation, but there were also two major recessions, which always have a negative effect on employment of all kinds.
Finally, the number of mfng jobs had actually been ticking up since the end of the Great Recession, though the current COVID recession has put an end to that.
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