In a tweet linking to his article Ben Casselman wrote
If Trump wants to help the people who elected him, he should focus on how to make post-mfg economy work for them.https://t.co/4gseM8AiMl
— Ben Casselman (@bencasselman) December 5, 2016
While I find myself in agreement with that (and I am thinking that Ben Casselman knows a lot more about this than I do) I wish he said how we can begin to shift this nations economy from a manufacturing based one to a service based one. Many of our biggest behemoth companies, IBM comes to mind, have made that shift anticipation this problem years ago and we need to learn from they saw and what they have done.
Back in March Casselman wrote an article for 538.com, Manufacturing Jobs Are Never Coming Back, in which he said:
“More than 80 percent of all private jobs are now in the service sector.”
Interestingly (and ironically since I come from that sector) one of the biggest contributors to the service economy is from the construction industry and right now we do a lot of talking about our crumbling infrastructure. I wonder if we shouldn’t we be spending more of our time and effort doing everything we can to put our construction industry hard at work on our physical infrastructure. And by that I don’t just mean roads and bridges I also mean building high speed internet everywhere, a better electrical grid, and other clean power solutions.
It’s disappointing even scary that Trumps cabinet appoints don’t show us he see the problem at all for what it is. Today from the Trump camp we hear he will be appointing DR. Ben Carson to head Housing and Urban Development (Stop Treating HUD Like A Second-Tier Department).
Why Trump’s Carrier Deal Isn’t The Way To Save U.S. Jobs
This is More Economics In Real Terms , a regular column analyzing the latest economic news. Comments? Criticisms? Ideas for future columns? or drop a note in the comments. The U.S. gained 178,000 jobs in November. But the only ones anyone seemed to be talking about last week were the roughly 1,000 jobs in Indiana that are no longer moving to Mexico.