CHAPEL HILL -- Even in our rancorous political times, virtually every politician and pundit in America would agree on one thing: The U.S. economy is not doing well these days.
To be sure, the prescriptions offered for our ailing economy vary wildly, but the chances for a successful therapeutic response would improve for all if would-be economic doctors got their diagnoses right.
Our manufacturing sector offers a case in point. If one listened mainly to the partisan drum-banging in Washington and the crude oversimplifications offered by media celebs and talk-show hosts on both the left and right - people such as Ed Schultz, Stephanie Miller, Lou Dobbs and Glenn Beck - one would think that the United States is no longer a major manufacturing power, that we've outsourced production of everything worth making and that we've been left behind as a manufacturing power by the likes of Germany, Japan, South Korea, China, etc.
Hold on a bit. While it is true that the relative role of manufacturing in the U.S. economy has declined significantly over the past 30 or 40 years and that the proportion of the labor force involved in manufacturing has fallen sharply as well, the U.S. is still the leading manufacturing nation in the world by virtually every standard.
For example, in terms of the total value of manufacturing output, the U.S., which produced manufactured goods valued at $1.7 trillion in 2009, still ranks as No. 1 in the world (though China is closing in fast). According to a report issued in March by the United Nations Industrial Development Organization, the U.S., with 19 percent of the world's total, is also first by a healthy margin in a more important measure: manufacturing value added.
As the category name suggests, value-added measurements take into account the quality and relative degree of sophistication of the goods being manufactured, so that a country like ours whose output consists in large part of high-value-added products such as airplanes, biomedical implements and gas turbines, will show better than countries that specialize in the manufacture of textiles, shoes and toys.
Because so small a percentage of the U.S. labor force is still engaged in manufacturing - about 11 percent in 2008 as opposed to almost 50 percent in China - manufacturing value-added per worker in this country is also incredibly high. Not surprisingly, overall labor productivity in U.S. manufacturing is at record levels as well.
Regardless if one is on the political left or right or somewhere in between, it behooves everyone to understand this context. We are not deindustrializing. The U.S. is still a great manufacturing power.
The real (constant dollar) value of U.S. manufacturing output reached an all-time high in 2007 before slipping slightly in 2008 because of the "great recession."
For a variety of reasons, however - our product mix, productivity-enhancing innovations in manufacturing technology, and globalization among them - we employ a far smaller proportion of our total labor force in manufacturing than we did in the past. With all due respect to AFL-CIO President Richard Trumka, Ohio Sen. Sherrod Brown and others, the downward macro trend in manufacturing employment is unlikely to change much in the future, with or without "green jobs," with or without "smart manufacturing" and with or without comebacks by Youngstown and Detroit.
Since the share of the American labor force employed in agriculture and related industries - 1.5 percent in 2008 - isn't likely to rise much either, we would all be better served by spending more time devising strategies to create and sustain good jobs in the burgeoning, if amorphous, service sector of the economy where the vast majority of American workers will almost certainly spend their working lives.
Peter A. Coclanis is Albert R. Newsome distinguished professor of history and director of the Global research Institute at UNC-Chapel Hill.
