The housing crisis of 2007/8 is the very definition of the gift that keeps on giving. A decade later we see that much of the country continues to find it’s mobility negatively affected by the housing crisis. This is a surprising factor that is limiting growth in manufacturing jobs. In the past, if you were a worker in a Manufacturing plant with an advanced skill set and the plant closed,…
Hint: its not about repatriating old jobs at all. As President Trump is learning, it’s as so simple as badgering Apple to repatriate manufacturing of the iPhone to the United States. Foxconn, the iPhone’s contract manufacturer suggests that there’s a bigger prize: making the U.S. central to the supply chain for advanced screen display technology, with a large plant here in the U.S. which could add 10-50K jobs. The iPhone is…
By Pratt Center for Community Development Urban manufacturing is being reborn in the United States. New small-batch producers are creating well-paying jobs in many cities that were once abandoned by more traditional manufacturers. Greater access to production technologies is making it possible for designers and entrepreneurs to innovate and create jobs by producing small runs, testing markets, refining designs and then launching new businesses. “Making,” “producing” and “manufacturing” are becoming…
An extraordinary coda to the Obama era is the story of the White House and Burning Man. As Dale Dougherty and I were developing the Maker City project, we worked with the White House to engage over 100 U.S. cities in making the pledges necessary to turn their cities and towns in Maker Cities. As I was leaving the White House one night two years ago I thought, “100 maker…
By Mark Muro and Peter Hirshberg Amid the hoopla of celebrating a deal to save 800 jobs at a Carrier Corp. factory in Indiana last month, President-elect Donald Trump promised to usher in a “new industrial revolution“—one that sounded as much like a social awakening as a manufacturing one. And maybe those gestures will help. However, there is another way to think about touching off an industrial revival in America…
Some of our friends/partner have written a series of articles on why the Trump administration is going to have a (very) hard time moving the needle with manufacturing jobs. It’s not just that manufacturing jobs have moved to China. There are (at least) three other factors. Automation and the rise of robots to do the low-end work will eliminate many jobs entirely. What economists call “job density” meaning the number…
