Phil Gramm and Don Boudreaux, in today’s WSJ:
Yet workers aren’t eager to do that (work in manufacturing plants), and for the past 60 years Americans have educated their children to enable them to work in the services industries where wages are higher and opportunities greater.
I wonder what Gramm and Boudreaux visualize when they use the term “service industries.” It is a very, very broad category, ranging from Uber Eats delivery drivers to shelf stockers at Home Depot to plumbers and handymen to trash collectors to warehouse workers at Amazon to local CPAs and high-level management consultants. Also rock bands, software development companies, and used-car salesmen.
True also of jobs in manufacturing, ranging from assembly worker to skilled machinist or toolmaker to shelf-stocker to dispatcher/expeditor to industrial engineer to PLC programmer to plant manager and VP of manufacturing.
Note that both the factory and the service business will employ janitors doing very similar work, and he will be categorized as a manufacturing or service employee accordingly…unless the job of ‘janitor’ is outsource to another firm, in which case he will fall under ‘services’.
Note also that the work of a distribution warehouse worker and the work of a stocker/picker in a factory will likely be very similar, despite the fact that the latter is considered ‘manufacturing’ and the former is considered ‘services.’ It would appear that Gramm and Boudreaux would regard the job of the warehouse worker as somehow higher-value and more in tune with technological progress.
Also, that part about Americans having educated their children to enable them to work in the services industries where wages are higher and opportunities greater…are they really unaware with the problems with so much American education over past decades, resulting in a lot of people who having limited written communication and even more limited basic math abilities? A lot of people are in dead-end service jobs specifically because of their lack of these skills, and indeed in many cases can function in those jobs at all only because of the computer-based deskilling that has been applied to the work.
Your thoughts?
