The polling isn't contradictory, it's a gotcha for those who avoiding a few minutes of thought about the numbers or who are more interested in a narrative. Do we need more PhD level AI researchers right now? I'm sure most would say yes, including myself. Are *you* going to get a PhD and work in that field. I, like almost all respondents, would say No, and with a bachelors in stats I'm well positioned to do that. So gotcha! People are so contradictory, right? No, there's lots of fields we could use more of that I'm also not interested in doing. Doesn't matter. How many potential factory workers would 25% of the adult population include? How many do we have now?
My own discussion of the numbers points that out, as well as the limitations of public opinion more generally (the link to the Bourdieu article on the creation of public opinion, etc.). Even the first footnote urges readers to consider the source. This was just a jumping off point for a larger discussion of what is being contemplated.
I’m sympathetic to this view that there is a huge share of individuals who would want to work in factories right now aren’t. 25% of working age adults comes out to be about 25-50 million people, depending on how you do the math. If 80% of people support it, then maybe we can even encourage people by suggesting there is some sort of skill and dare I say dignity in the work.
One of my buddies who is in law school says as much — that he would be happier on an assembly line than behind a computer. Even I’m interested in the branch of medicine that, to me, feels like a skilled manual labor job.
However, we acknowledge that this is definitely a romanticized view of what that work would actually entail. A nostalgia for a past that never was. And yet kids today are playing Minecraft, 100 years after we banned them from working in mines. Do the children really long for the mines or is that just an ironic joke?
I’m bullish on the significance and dignity of manual labor. Time will tell.
I mean, in my previous role at CBRE, a lot of the work involved reporting on advanced manufacturing groups that they'd partnered with. I'd go to the plants, many of which were built 2016-2021, and write about what was going on there. A number of these operations were constructed in the wake of first-term Trump tax cuts and partly in response to his earlier tariffs. They were quite impressive - state-of-the art mold making, tooling, amazing inventory systems - but they were employing only 100-300 very skilled workers in places like Milwaukee and Minneapolis, many of whose jobs seemed to be a fusion of white and blue collar labor but certainly had them poring over computer screens at all times.
The big complaint, especially from a saw manufacturer I visited, was that the kind of "vocational intellectual" they found in Germany, where that company was based, was much harder to find here due to the lack of genuine academic tracking in the lower grades and especially outside of the union ranks (the best candidates were people who were going into skilled trades, as with the Operating Engineers, etc. but not these skilled jobs, which paid well but were non-union). Another problem, at least there, was that a few pieces of equipment didn't fit "American dimensions" very well, or at least the part of the labor pool from which they were hiring (they were sometimes able to find incredibly qualified candidates, very bright, who were morbidly obese). But they were doing well enough, and they always had openings.
My brother, who runs a Navistar International franchise, is another curious case: trained since before high school as a mechanic by our father (he never finished high school and indeed has almost no formal education whatsoever...though neither did I until the 10th grade), but primarily someone who today works with small but highly sophisticated local manufacturers to custom-package trucks to get around things like DEF regulations and the like, to create bespoke mobile maintenance stations for school districts getting rid of their fixed bus garages, etc. ... but his work is not the same diesel wrench-turning that he did as a teen or that our grandfather did in the submarine service. He's working from a laptop or on the road much of the time. He makes 2x as much as I do in a corporate role, perhaps 3x in a good year.
Another thoroughly engrossing piece. As always, I appreciate the skill with which you lay out the contradictions and complexity of this country at a time when such perspectives are few and far between.
I’m glad at least a few people are still reading and engaging with that analysis too, Lee. It’s easy to say “he can’t make up his mind about this” or move on from an article that’s being freely offered.
Much of our public policy across the rust belt has been directed towards the eventual return of manufacturing jobs. In effect, we’ve helped those payed-off during the long period of de-industrialization and their children to hang around…marginally-employed for decades. It’s done wonders for OxyContin salespeople and lottery ticket printers, but little benefit for the average worker. Regardless of the size of tariffs, these jobs will not return. We don’t have the willpower to perform them with anything approaching acceptable standards. Our children are not prepared to perform them. Schenectady will not employ 25,000 people making complex machines again. Our political leaders are naive dreamers or malevolent schemers.
Oliver, great essay. There is so much there that I'm not sure where to start. Here are a few scattershot thoughts. I read reccently that a French company is starting a shipyard on the Great Lakes, has navy contracts, but can't find skilled workers. As a shipyard welder in my youth I know the level of skill necessary and the brutal conditions.[ruined my hearing] I'm not confident that many of today's young people would want that kind of job, or would last if they took it. However, I'm not sure why trade unions are now advertising for apprentices When I got into the IBEW you pretty much had to have a dad or uncle in the trade to get in. Construction work is hard, they don't put up with bullshit like calling off or being late to work. But, pay is great, 401K, health care and a pension. You'd think that workers would be knocking down the doors to get in. One thing limiting applications is that you have to be in decent shape, have basic math skills up through algebra and be willing to put up with blue collar ball busting on the job. There is no HR DEI person to deal with micro-aggressions. Having spent many years in academia, I suspect that many college educated liberal arts majors, who romanticize the industrial working class think that if we build the factories "they will come". John Henry, Joe Hill etc. will walk out of the broken down mills and start rebuilding America.
This is absolutely the part I was trying to capture here ("you have to be in decent shape, have basic math skills up through algebra and be willing to put up with blue collar ball busting on the job") and I think it speaks to the success Germany and Japan have continued to have in advanced manufacturing and other areas, such as it is or was. We have a specific kind of human resources crisis, with very high levels of obesity (tending towards immobility) and functional illiteracy/innumeracy (both in raw and percentage numbers). That's a complicating factor neither side is talking about, but it's huge.
This is an excellent analysis. Virtue isn’t baked in to any particular type of work, nor absent from jobs that don’t involve hazardous conditions. And even today’s factory jobs increasingly resemble other jobs rather than the (supposedly) secure unionized, community-building factory jobs of the last century. So much nonsense about industrial work online from people who have never even been to a Midwest factory town.
Yes, that's absolutely right. I hate to write so much just to say "it's complicated, it isn't easy, it couldn't even happen the way you think it would," but...that's the case. In the book Advanced Manufacturing I cite down in the footnotes, a lot of the AM jobs do increasingly resemble other jobs, not just in the fact they're insecure (or would be here in the US, at least) but that they may require a lot of sitting at a computer terminal, skills not dissimilar to what a graphic designer or coder does, etc. Are these "virtuous" jobs? They're certainly not easy ones.
The polling isn't contradictory, it's a gotcha for those who avoiding a few minutes of thought about the numbers or who are more interested in a narrative. Do we need more PhD level AI researchers right now? I'm sure most would say yes, including myself. Are *you* going to get a PhD and work in that field. I, like almost all respondents, would say No, and with a bachelors in stats I'm well positioned to do that. So gotcha! People are so contradictory, right? No, there's lots of fields we could use more of that I'm also not interested in doing. Doesn't matter. How many potential factory workers would 25% of the adult population include? How many do we have now?
My own discussion of the numbers points that out, as well as the limitations of public opinion more generally (the link to the Bourdieu article on the creation of public opinion, etc.). Even the first footnote urges readers to consider the source. This was just a jumping off point for a larger discussion of what is being contemplated.
I’m sympathetic to this view that there is a huge share of individuals who would want to work in factories right now aren’t. 25% of working age adults comes out to be about 25-50 million people, depending on how you do the math. If 80% of people support it, then maybe we can even encourage people by suggesting there is some sort of skill and dare I say dignity in the work.
One of my buddies who is in law school says as much — that he would be happier on an assembly line than behind a computer. Even I’m interested in the branch of medicine that, to me, feels like a skilled manual labor job.
However, we acknowledge that this is definitely a romanticized view of what that work would actually entail. A nostalgia for a past that never was. And yet kids today are playing Minecraft, 100 years after we banned them from working in mines. Do the children really long for the mines or is that just an ironic joke?
I’m bullish on the significance and dignity of manual labor. Time will tell.
I mean, in my previous role at CBRE, a lot of the work involved reporting on advanced manufacturing groups that they'd partnered with. I'd go to the plants, many of which were built 2016-2021, and write about what was going on there. A number of these operations were constructed in the wake of first-term Trump tax cuts and partly in response to his earlier tariffs. They were quite impressive - state-of-the art mold making, tooling, amazing inventory systems - but they were employing only 100-300 very skilled workers in places like Milwaukee and Minneapolis, many of whose jobs seemed to be a fusion of white and blue collar labor but certainly had them poring over computer screens at all times.
The big complaint, especially from a saw manufacturer I visited, was that the kind of "vocational intellectual" they found in Germany, where that company was based, was much harder to find here due to the lack of genuine academic tracking in the lower grades and especially outside of the union ranks (the best candidates were people who were going into skilled trades, as with the Operating Engineers, etc. but not these skilled jobs, which paid well but were non-union). Another problem, at least there, was that a few pieces of equipment didn't fit "American dimensions" very well, or at least the part of the labor pool from which they were hiring (they were sometimes able to find incredibly qualified candidates, very bright, who were morbidly obese). But they were doing well enough, and they always had openings.
My brother, who runs a Navistar International franchise, is another curious case: trained since before high school as a mechanic by our father (he never finished high school and indeed has almost no formal education whatsoever...though neither did I until the 10th grade), but primarily someone who today works with small but highly sophisticated local manufacturers to custom-package trucks to get around things like DEF regulations and the like, to create bespoke mobile maintenance stations for school districts getting rid of their fixed bus garages, etc. ... but his work is not the same diesel wrench-turning that he did as a teen or that our grandfather did in the submarine service. He's working from a laptop or on the road much of the time. He makes 2x as much as I do in a corporate role, perhaps 3x in a good year.
Another thoroughly engrossing piece. As always, I appreciate the skill with which you lay out the contradictions and complexity of this country at a time when such perspectives are few and far between.
I’m glad at least a few people are still reading and engaging with that analysis too, Lee. It’s easy to say “he can’t make up his mind about this” or move on from an article that’s being freely offered.
Much of our public policy across the rust belt has been directed towards the eventual return of manufacturing jobs. In effect, we’ve helped those payed-off during the long period of de-industrialization and their children to hang around…marginally-employed for decades. It’s done wonders for OxyContin salespeople and lottery ticket printers, but little benefit for the average worker. Regardless of the size of tariffs, these jobs will not return. We don’t have the willpower to perform them with anything approaching acceptable standards. Our children are not prepared to perform them. Schenectady will not employ 25,000 people making complex machines again. Our political leaders are naive dreamers or malevolent schemers.
Oliver, great essay. There is so much there that I'm not sure where to start. Here are a few scattershot thoughts. I read reccently that a French company is starting a shipyard on the Great Lakes, has navy contracts, but can't find skilled workers. As a shipyard welder in my youth I know the level of skill necessary and the brutal conditions.[ruined my hearing] I'm not confident that many of today's young people would want that kind of job, or would last if they took it. However, I'm not sure why trade unions are now advertising for apprentices When I got into the IBEW you pretty much had to have a dad or uncle in the trade to get in. Construction work is hard, they don't put up with bullshit like calling off or being late to work. But, pay is great, 401K, health care and a pension. You'd think that workers would be knocking down the doors to get in. One thing limiting applications is that you have to be in decent shape, have basic math skills up through algebra and be willing to put up with blue collar ball busting on the job. There is no HR DEI person to deal with micro-aggressions. Having spent many years in academia, I suspect that many college educated liberal arts majors, who romanticize the industrial working class think that if we build the factories "they will come". John Henry, Joe Hill etc. will walk out of the broken down mills and start rebuilding America.
This is absolutely the part I was trying to capture here ("you have to be in decent shape, have basic math skills up through algebra and be willing to put up with blue collar ball busting on the job") and I think it speaks to the success Germany and Japan have continued to have in advanced manufacturing and other areas, such as it is or was. We have a specific kind of human resources crisis, with very high levels of obesity (tending towards immobility) and functional illiteracy/innumeracy (both in raw and percentage numbers). That's a complicating factor neither side is talking about, but it's huge.
This is an excellent analysis. Virtue isn’t baked in to any particular type of work, nor absent from jobs that don’t involve hazardous conditions. And even today’s factory jobs increasingly resemble other jobs rather than the (supposedly) secure unionized, community-building factory jobs of the last century. So much nonsense about industrial work online from people who have never even been to a Midwest factory town.
Yes, that's absolutely right. I hate to write so much just to say "it's complicated, it isn't easy, it couldn't even happen the way you think it would," but...that's the case. In the book Advanced Manufacturing I cite down in the footnotes, a lot of the AM jobs do increasingly resemble other jobs, not just in the fact they're insecure (or would be here in the US, at least) but that they may require a lot of sitting at a computer terminal, skills not dissimilar to what a graphic designer or coder does, etc. Are these "virtuous" jobs? They're certainly not easy ones.