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Programming The Almighty Buck IT

Software Is Hiring, But Manufacturing Is Bleeding 102

Posted by timothy from the today's-economics-lesson-involves-protectionism dept.
Nerval's Lobster writes: Which tech segment added the most jobs in August? According to new data from the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics, tech consulting gained 7,000 positions in August, (Dice link) below July's gains of 11,100, but enough to set it ahead of data processing, hosting, and related services (which added 1,600 jobs) and computer and electronic-product manufacturing (which lost 1,800 jobs). The latest numbers reflect some longtime trends: The rise of cloud services and infrastructure has contributed to slackening demand for PCs and other hardware, eroding manufacturing jobs. At the same time, increased appetite for everything from Web developers to information-systems managers has kept employers adding positions in other technology segments. If that didn't make things difficult enough for manufacturing folks, the rise of automation has cut down on the number of manufacturing jobs available worldwide, contributing to continuing pressure on the segment as a whole, despite all the noise about bringing those jobs back to the U.S.
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Software Is Hiring, But Manufacturing Is Bleeding More

Software Is Hiring, But Manufacturing Is Bleeding

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  • (Dice link) (Score:5, Insightful)

    by grimmjeeper ( 2301232 ) on Tuesday September 08, 2015 @02:02PM (#50480359) Homepage
    At least they're being a little more up front about click bait now...

    • Re: (Score:2, Interesting)

      by Anonymous Coward

      But not about the fact that Nerval's Lobster has ONLY ever submitted stories which link to Dice.

      Which means timothy is promoting stories from other Dice staffers and utterly failing to mention that.

      Look at the story submissions from Nerval's Lobster [slashdot.org] ... that posting history screams "shilling for Dice".

      But apparently Dice doesn't have any issues with shamelessly pushing clickbait to their own stuff.

      Fuck you, Dice.

  • Slashdot's worth (Score:1)

    by Anonymous Coward

    Keep at it dice, I'm sure with this constant shill drivel someone will pick up Slashdot for a bargain.

    • Re: (Score:1)

      by Anonymous Coward
      With the quality of comments so low after so many years in decline, there's no way Slashdot could be a bargain at any price.
  • horses used to supply horsepower. in the near future, man used to supply manpower. http://www.barrons.com/article... [barrons.com]

  • Anyone know if (Score:3)

    by rsilvergun ( 571051 ) on Tuesday September 08, 2015 @02:17PM (#50480541)
    We're producing less? I'm guessing no and that this is the effects of all that automation I keep hearing isn't happening...

    • Re: (Score:1, Interesting)

      by Anonymous Coward

      No, we're not producing less. the US is producing more then it ever has, more than ever other country except China and China only took over the crown a few years ago.
      It's total BS that US manufacturing is in decline. There are fewer jobs in manufacturing, but an ever increasing amount of stuff is being made.

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by Rob Riggs ( 6418 )

      We're producing less? I'm guessing no and that this is the effects of all that automation I keep hearing isn't happening...

      Our manufacturing sector is growing, but slowly. It is far slower than most developing countries. Here is a decent article on manufacturing grown rates: https://www.mapi.net/china-has-dominant-share-world-manufacturing [mapi.net]. That said, we are probably dropping in certain sectors, such as computer/electronics manufacturing. The U.S. is either outsourcing or automating a lot of the manufacturing jobs out of existence.

    • Re:Anyone know if (Score:5, Insightful)

      by ErichTheRed ( 39327 ) on Tuesday September 08, 2015 @04:45PM (#50481977)

      I think it's that we're producing fewer goods that require unskilled manufacturing labor. US GDP is heavily skewed by high-ticket military equipment, cars and airplanes (Boeing, Lockheed, GM, Ford, etc.) So instead of millions of textile and toy factories employing a huge middle class, we have massive mostly automated factories that don't employ anyone from the unskilled pool and very few from the skilled pool. One $3 billion airplane doesn't add the same number of jobs that $3 billion worth of consumer goods does.

      Growing up in a Rust Belt city, I saw exactly what the first loss of manufacturing did in the 80s. Factory work wasn't glamorous, but it paid well, had good benefits based on union membership, and it was stable. Low-skilled guys were able to live a middle class life, put their kids through school, and buy things occasionally to power the local economy. Even a local bar or pizza place was affected by 5000+ workers in 3 shifts working steel mills, car plants, etc. Now it looks like the entire country is going to turn into the Rust Belt, and I'm not a big fan of that idea.

      • the entire country is going to turn into the Rust Belt, and I'm not a big fan of that idea.

        Pardon me for going political, but the GOP is either clueless, or echoing propaganda of the rich in exchange for money or favors.

        Their idea of "fixing" the economy is to lower taxes and regulations, which will allegedly create some undefined wad of new employment or inventions that stimulate general hiring.

        But there is plenty of investment money floating around; it's not the current bottleneck. The rich are already bi

        • Correction: should be "overseas factories and mines" not "overseas factory mines".

        • I see a lot of smug comments about either Democrats (D) or Republicans (R) when the reality is that both parties have done their best, at the behest of their well heeled sponsors, to have the rich get richer while the 99% gets the shaft. "Free trade" deals have been done under both D and R and in both cases created a race to the bottom that decimated the middle class. Wages have been stagnant since the early 70s, and in the past 40+ years there have been multiple D and R administrations. This is not a pa

          • Wages have been stagnant since the early 70s,

            That conclusion is based on a simplistic analysis of tax records, not taking account demographic changes and not taking into account the vastly increased amounts of government services and benefits people increase. Furthermore, increases in government benefits and services primarily hurt the middle class, because that's who necessarily has to pay for it.

            So, some people get rich through political corruption and that hurts the country. A lot of that political corru

            • That conclusion is based on a simplistic analysis of tax records, not taking account demographic changes and not taking into account the vastly increased amounts of government services and benefits people increase.

              I agree that there are lots of ways to arrange the data, however all of them show that wages for most people are stagnant or in some cases falling. If you look at the average wage vs productivity, a slightly different argument but still relevant, you find that wages have not risen proportionally with productivity though they largely did until the 70s. The poor have done much better comparatively speaking due to the government programs you mentioned. Taxing at rates comparable to earlier years is not thro

              • I agree that there are lots of ways to arrange the data, however all of them show that wages for most people are stagnant or in some cases falling.

                "Wages" are the wrong measure; you need to look at the combination of wages, non-wage compensation, working hours, defined benefits, government programs, and insurance. Second, you need to look at the workforce and demographics: as more women enter the workforce, as more family activities get turned into jobs, and as fewer people are married, of course, wages dro

                • But even if we could tax at higher rates, what for? So that Bernie or Hillary or whoever can engage in even more crony capitalism?

                  You touch on what I consider to be one of the largest wrongs of the current way of doing things. If the rich are taxed more what is done with the tax proceeds? That's a fair question that I don't think gets enough attention. The current thinking is to give ever more to the poor such that for many people being a non-working person is advantageous over being a entry level or minimum wage worker. That's just morally wrong. Non-working people should *never* have it better than working people. My personal

                  • So I'd suggest taking the taxes and giving them out as a quarterly bonus to anyone who had worked that quarter with no means testing

                    "Has worked" by what criteria? Did they do anything useful? Does some artist who produces shitty paintings nobody wants get money?

                    What about a system in which, if you do something useful for your fellow human beings, they give you tokens rewarding you, and how many tokens you have indicates how valuable you are to society?

                    Well, there is such a system: the free market, and the

                    • By has worked I meant a job, as in the kind that pays wages and taxes. I hear your concern that the free market does much of this, however inequality is a greater concern than keeping a "pure" free market. Moreover the market is anything but free or else we'd be able to buy prescription drugs from Canada at 1/3 the cost. What's your plan for improving things?

                    • I hear your concern that the free market does much of this, however inequality is a greater concern than keeping a "pure" free market.

                      Why is "inequality" a concern? We should make sure nobody starves, but beyond that, I don't see inequality as a problem.

                      While some inequality may be due to lack of fairness, if you give government the power to redress unfair situations, it will invariably abuse that power, and the cure is worse than the disease.

                      Moreover the market is anything but free or else we'd be able to

        • Old Joke (Score:4, Insightful)

          by rsilvergun ( 571051 ) on Tuesday September 08, 2015 @09:41PM (#50483801)
          There's a conservative, a working man and a Union man at a table with 10 cookies. The conservative snatches up 9 cookies and gobbles them up. Then he turns to the working man and says "Hey, watch out, that guys gonna eat your cookie".

      • US GDP is heavily skewed by high-ticket military equipment

        This skew actually makes manufacturing a lot less sustainable in the US.

        See, the real reason why China is so dominant at this point is that the supply chains have migrated there. Labor costs, adjusted for productivity, tariffs, shipping, etc. have about reached parity.

        So, without a good supply chain, you have a hard time being a manufacturer.

        The military pays silly prices for stuff. So that means that a company that sells to the military has a silly price sheet. Which means that they're not an option for a

    • This is not simply a product of automation. The Government pays companies to ship manual jobs overseas both directly and indirectly. We are producing less _and_ automation is taking away a percentage of the remaining menial jobs.

      I really fail to grasp why people "guess" at answers they could easily find if they bothered to try.

    • We're producing more food than we did back when agriculture was a large part of the economy. "Post-whatever" means that "whatever" has become so bloody efficient that it no longer requires nearly as many resources as it did, and becomes a much less significant part of the economy, and no longer provides lots of jobs.

  • It is our job, to make computers and robotics faster, smarter and more agile.
    Technology is doing things that we use to need specialist for.

    Now this overall isn't a bad thing, however there is a problem that technology is improving faster than people are getting educated for. So people who had a good paying medium skill job, are finding that they are being replaced by technology. And we are in a case where we will need 1 technician to manage the technology for every 10 workers.

    With our current economic syst

  • So you're saying that being a consultant is up. Maybe that has to do with corporations restructuring to not have full-time employees, and outsource as much as possible to avoid benefit payments. Also you're saying manufacturing is down. Have you considered maybe this has do with the US patent/copyright system and that startups have to invest huge sums of money to verify the ting you want to build is vaguely related to something being held in a warchest somewhere or by a troll. Absolutely improvements in

  • H1b (Score:1, Interesting)

    by micahraleigh ( 2600457 )
    How many of these positions are H1b?

    In the fine lines you can read from the latest labor report that most/all of the new jobs in the US have gone to foreigners (mostly low pay). I'm wondering if the tech narrative fits in with that.

  • If you take a look at the raw numbers (Score:3)

    by Crashmarik ( 635988 ) on Tuesday September 08, 2015 @02:42PM (#50480777)

    You see a much different picture overall

    https://research.stlouisfed.or... [stlouisfed.org]

    https://research.stlouisfed.or... [stlouisfed.org]

    And here's the chart

    http://imgur.com/PA4QfSl [imgur.com]

    What you have is large numbers of guest/H1B workers being hired while the market for American born workers in any sector is dead stagnant since 2007
    BTW thanks for the hope and change.

    • Re: (Score:2, Interesting)

      by Anonymous Coward

      Kind of looks like the hope and change helped pull us out of the hole based on your info, as the total number of jobs is more than what it was before the recession. Seems like a rather odd remark based on the information you provided. Also the years you're seeing spikes in foreign labor beyond what was there before the recession are the ones where Republicans were in control generally...so again weird that you would use an anti-Obama comment. Did you actually read your own info?

      • Kind of looks like the hope and change helped pull us out of the hole based on your info, as the total number of jobs is more than what it was before the recession.

        I really don't give a crap about the total number of jobs, I am concerned about unemployed American citizens, and there's a hell of a lot more of those.

        also the years you're seeing spikes in foreign labor beyond what was there before the recession are the ones where Republicans were in control generally

        Yeah 2008, to 2015 the Republicans were really in control then. Here let me google this for you

        https://www.google.com/search?... [google.com]
        https://www.google.com/search?... [google.com]

        Anyway I see why you posted anonymously.

  • Manufacturing vs Jobs in Manufacturing (Score:3, Interesting)

    by PeterJFraser ( 572070 ) on Tuesday September 08, 2015 @02:53PM (#50480919)
    Manufacturing is coming back, but the manufacturing that is coming back is automated. The manufacturing jobs are not coming back.

  • Oil bubble bursted (Score:3)

    by shbazjinkens ( 776313 ) on Tuesday September 08, 2015 @03:16PM (#50481171)
    I think another huge contributor to a drop in manufacturing is the oil bust earlier this year. Maybe around a hundred thousand have been laid off now because of that and budgets cut across the board. The sheer amount of steel and labor involved in the last several years of shale booms is mind-boggling. Those areas still don't have good pipeline infrastructure, so oil is often trucked away and surplus gas burned off. It's visible from space and shows up better than nearby metropolitan areas. Look at these images of the Bakken and Eagle Ford Shales [geology.com].

    Meanwhile, all of the tech equipment purchasing supporting those activities has come to a grinding halt.

  • End of story. In the next decade or two, we'll be printing self driving cars, houses, appliances and possibly replacement organs. AI will increasingly replace nurses, security guards, clerks, and others. As time goes by, you're either the person doing the automating, managing the automation or you're unemployed.

    It's not a great message for people with no skills, but it's true, nonetheless. There are still service jobs, but there's a limit to these as well.

    A guaranteed basic income in exchange for sterilizat

    • This is hardly new. There has always been a tradeoff between long term capital investment and the option for using higher cost (per unit manufactured) hand labor. The equation is not just the cost per hour of a person vs. the lifetime cost of a machine. There is often different tradeoffs in quality and flexibility. Due to rising asian labor rates, increased shipping rates, very high Chinese energy costs, the capital cost of product sitting idle in transit and the general brain damage of working with an

    • Re: (Score:1)

      by Anonymous Coward

      Sterilization seems overboard. Every woman should be entitled to at least 2x children.

      I do think you should be able to buy or sell that entitlement for the total cost of supporting 2x child's living expenses for 18 years.

      To avoid inflation, those sales would need to go through an intermediary trust which dispenses the money in 24 payments per year for 18-60 years.

      Also, nobody should be able to sell their entitlement until they are 18 years old.

      So "yes" to basic income, and "yes" to increasing the basic inco

    • Yeah, I have a better idea. Basic income, full stop. For everyone.

      We don't need some distopian decrease in population through mandatory sterilization. We have enough to feed, clothe, house, etc. the population, even as it increases. Automation will keep increasing as well.

      • ...We have enough to feed, clothe, house, etc. the population, even as it increases.

        Yes, for a little while, until the cheap (emphasis on cheap) hydrocarbons run out (They will always exist).
        Until the mined phosphates run out.
        Until enough major aquifers in major agricultural areas run dry.
        Until some whackjob with a nuke or two decides that the problem of resource scarcity can be solved by nuking their neighbors.

        2100 is going to be the start of an interesting era. I'm grateful that I won't be here for the sh

        • We'll be using bioenginered bacteria to make cheap hydrocarbons long before 2100, and cheaper than drilling them.

          Reclaiming phosphates seems the hardest problem. And I don't know that much about it, but assume it's solvable.

          The aquifers, like all water issues will get solved by desalination. The major agricultural areas will move to where water can be used from the sea.

  • Blame Central Bank Zero Intrest Rates (Score:3)

    by trout007 ( 975317 ) on Tuesday September 08, 2015 @03:32PM (#50481317)

    I used to work designing automation equipment. The two biggest factors in deciding to automate are the labor rate and interest rate. If you are going to automate you are looking for a payback between 2-5 years (at least for the industry I was in). Thr Central banks low Intrest policies make this payback much shorter which leads to more automation. If they actually let the market set rates they would be much higher now which would tend to favor hiring more people instead of automation.

  • The rise of automation is painfully obvious to anyone who cares to look around. At the same time, there are no jobs that the vast majority of those affected are qualified to do. I worry that a lot of people are going to be pushed into retraining as "techies" and further dilute the talent pool. Seriously, I'm no genius and don't claim to be a rockstar ninja whatever, but I've worked with people who just don't belong near anything technical, at all. Do we really need an influx of factory workers and office dr

  • A distinction that needs to be made: we're bringing manufacturing back to the United States but not necessarily all the manufacturing jobs. Automation and other manufacturing efficiencies developed over the last three decades means we can make more with much few people, and even the quality of those jobs is different from before - in the old days, it would be large numbers of middle class, blue collar jobs. Now, it's a small handful of highly skilled white collar workers and an army of minimum wage individ

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