Zero Manufacturing Jobs Added. Zero. [View all]

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Zero Manufacturing Jobs Added. Zero.

Saturday, 04 May 2013 13:22
By Dave Johnson, Campaign for America's Future | Op-Ed



President Obama set a goal of 1 million new manufacturing jobs in his second term. Last month we added zero. Not one. Nada. Zip. We did add low-wage jobs, though. Maybe we can talk about a national manufacturing strategy now?

A Million Manufacturing Jobs?

In the 2012 campaign President Obama set a goal of creating 1 million new manufacturing jobs. (This goal comes after the country lost 5.5 million manufacturing jobs between 2000 and 2009.) Manufacturing jobs bring money into the economy. Manufacturing jobs also bring along with them many jobs in other sectors that support manufacturing, from the supply chain to the maintenance to the marketing and sales of the goods. This is what the President understood when he set this goal.

But with the March jobs numbers out this morning the economy has created a total of only 39,000 manufacturing jobs this year — zero in March. That leaves the country with 961,000 manufacturing jobs to go in the time remaining.

Perhaps this dearth of new manufacturing jobs has something to do with the economic stagnation we see around us?

Job Report Summary

While the jobs report was not too bad overall, it was terrible for manufacturing. Job growth for January and February was revised up by 114,000, so average job growth for the last three months was 212,000. But job gains were largely in low-wage sectors with zero gained in manufacturing. Employment services, restaurant employees and the retail sector accounted for more than half of April job growth. Health care added 19,000 jobs. ....................(more)

The complete piece is at: http://truth-out.org/opinion/item/16172-zero-manufacturing-jobs-added-zero