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Software Is Hiring, But Manufacturing Is Bleeding
Nerval's Lobster writes: Which tech segment added the most jobs in August? According to new data from the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics, tech consulting gained 7,000 positions in August, (Dice link) below July's gains of 11,100, but enough to set it ahead of data processing, hosting, and related services (which added 1,600 jobs) and computer and electronic-product manufacturing (which lost 1,800 jobs). The latest numbers reflect some longtime trends: The rise of cloud services and infrastructure has contributed to slackening demand for PCs and other hardware, eroding manufacturing jobs. At the same time, increased appetite for everything from Web developers to information-systems managers has kept employers adding positions in other technology segments. If that didn't make things difficult enough for manufacturing folks, the rise of automation has cut down on the number of manufacturing jobs available worldwide, contributing to continuing pressure on the segment as a whole, despite all the noise about bringing those jobs back to the U.S.
Their days are numbered, however.
At least they're being a little more up front about click bait now...
Keep at it dice, I'm sure with this constant shill drivel someone will pick up Slashdot for a bargain.
horses used to supply horsepower. in the near future, man used to supply manpower. http://www.barrons.com/article...
It's OK. It's not like there's any money/wealth in making things anymore. Modern economies revolve around Apps.
We're producing less? I'm guessing no and that this is the effects of all that automation I keep hearing isn't happening...
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So a little while ago I felt like I had a great big healthy shit coming on. I mean it makes sense. I have been adding more fiber to my diet lately. So I sat on my white porcelain throne and then ... *unghhnhhghhghh* *PLOP*
Ah. Wow that was a big one. Damn it this is a big, wide, long log. It'll probably fold in half and get stuck
and clog the fucking toilet. Again. Ah well. I will deal with that if and when it happens.
... oh no. I feel something knotty.
Yup, what I feared from this turd has come to pass. I have lots of hairs around my asshole. I suppose most men
do. Nature's way of saying "I love you! But not that much."
It was such a wide turd-log with such girth though. Amazing that my otherwise virgin asshole can expand that wide. Hmm that could be a problem. So I start to wipe. Damn it this could take a while. I got feces smeared on the sides of my ass cheeks from the girth of that turd. I wipe some more and
There it is. I can feel it through the single ply paper. A great big DINGLEBERRY. Naturally I try to awkwardly grab it with a folded sheet of toilet paper and dislodge it. I pull. Ouch. I pull harder. OUCH. Wow during its brief passage past the asshair, this turd-let really securely managed to get caught on some ass hairs. I can't just pull the dingleberry out without ripping the hairs right out. I have no idea if that caries the possibility of breaking the fecal encrusted skin and leading to an infection or what, but I know it would hurt so I want other options. I try gathering lots of sheets of toilet paper. I repeatedly wipe the same area over and over, hoping to wear this fucker down. I manage to whittle it down a little but this is taking far too much time. This turd is really determined to stay in its new home!
I can't very well pull my underpants back up now, that would get them all shitty and smelly. If I wanted to smell bad all the time I would let myself get fat. Maybe some water will help. I awkwardly reach for the faucet, turning it to a slow stream, and wet some toilet paper, making a mental note to disinfect the faucet handle later. I can't see the damned thing but judging from the brown stains appearing on the sheets of toilet paper, I am at least making progress. Now my hands are wet and shitty smelling and I am thinking this better be worth it. I use a dry sheet to feel for the dingleberry again. It did shrink but it's still there, dangling from my ass hairs, mocking me. WTF have I been eating lately to produce such a persistent turd? Nature does abhor a vacuum, which is why lots of gas has entered my bowels where the big turd-log recently was. I enjoy a nice after-defecating loud fart while I wonder what to do next. I chuckle because when the fart is your own, you don't think it stinks but you know somebody else would evacuate the area. Ok time to stop laughing, this is a serious predicament.
I toy with the idea of getting some scissors or something to try and cut the dingleberry out. Then I consider this is a sensitive area, I cannot see what I am doing, and it's too close for comfort to my cock and balls to be wielding a bladed item. I am starting to get angry. I am starting to not care anymore about the consequences of just yanking the damned thing out. I tried the easier ways and they failed. Fuck it, I have places to be and things to do. I can't very well spend all day in the bathroom playing a not-so-fun game with a turd. I double up on toilet paper and get a good secure grip on the dingleberry. Okay fucker, you're going DOWN. *YANK* Yeouch, fuck that hurt as much as I thought it would. And there it is, in my hand, nestled in the folds of toilet paper: my dingleberry! Ha ha ha, you won the battle, dingleberry, but I just won the war! I rub my sore ass cheek. Then I ceremoniously plop that fucker in the toilet bowl, to briefly swim with his big brother log. Oh man, you never heard such a satisfying flushing sound in your life. I rub some aftershave around my
It is our job, to make computers and robotics faster, smarter and more agile.
Technology is doing things that we use to need specialist for.
Now this overall isn't a bad thing, however there is a problem that technology is improving faster than people are getting educated for. So people who had a good paying medium skill job, are finding that they are being replaced by technology. And we are in a case where we will need 1 technician to manage the technology for every 10 workers.
With our current economic system the only real solution, is having more businesses and expand the economy to give 9 more technicians jobs. Now this isn't easy, because the economy can only grow so much, without having too much pure crap being released.
If something is so important that you feel the need to post it on the internet... It probably isn't that important.
So you're saying that being a consultant is up. Maybe that has to do with corporations restructuring to not have full-time employees, and outsource as much as possible to avoid benefit payments. Also you're saying manufacturing is down. Have you considered maybe this has do with the US patent/copyright system and that startups have to invest huge sums of money to verify the ting you want to build is vaguely related to something being held in a warchest somewhere or by a troll. Absolutely improvements in automation reduce the time to produce the same product, but somewhere somebody has to generate new product demand that doesn't own their own fabrication plants on the other side of the world.
How many of these positions are H1b?
In the fine lines you can read from the latest labor report that most/all of the new jobs in the US have gone to foreigners (mostly low pay). I'm wondering if the tech narrative fits in with that.
You see a much different picture overall
https://research.stlouisfed.or...
https://research.stlouisfed.or...
And here's the chart
http://imgur.com/PA4QfSl
What you have is large numbers of guest/H1B workers being hired while the market for American born workers in any sector is dead stagnant since 2007
BTW thanks for the hope and change.
Never really worked out that way. Ever contract I've had for the past five years I've had to either be trained in the new position or take extra time to learn it myself. Though the company I'm contracting for is not hiring replacements when people retire and loosing their knowledge base, rather than cutting regular employees lose.
getting educated costs to much / the old 4 year system is needs a lot of change to better fit in to days tech / speed of change.
Manufacturing is coming back, but the manufacturing that is coming back is automated. The manufacturing jobs are not coming back.
Ignore Dice stats or any other online job board's stats.
Most companies use their own websites, recruiters or their own employees.
See, my company would get hundreds of qualified applicants - all internal. Although we had to hire internally, it didn't prevent us from asking our own employees for referrals.
We - I - send out an email to my guys saying " you know what we do. We need someone from the company." It never fails.
I get a new guy in two weeks or less.
And they have always worked out.
I am a PHB at a three letter services company. I wish I could hire all of you unemployed guys because unlike the morons in Sikicon Valley and elsewhere, I know you have been screwed over.
I know what it's like to be considered a great employee and then when your job is offshored and you're canned, you are considered damaged goods by assholes - because you're unemployed.
I want to different. I am but there are too many of you. I can't hire all of you - and it's just metro Atlanta for me.
Tech is a Shitty career and I am glad my daughter went to Med school.
I think another huge contributor to a drop in manufacturing is the oil bust earlier this year. Maybe around a hundred thousand have been laid off now because of that and budgets cut across the board. The sheer amount of steel and labor involved in the last several years of shale booms is mind-boggling. Those areas still don't have good pipeline infrastructure, so oil is often trucked away and surplus gas burned off. It's visible from space and shows up better than nearby metropolitan areas. Look at these images of the Bakken and Eagle Ford Shales.
Meanwhile, all of the tech equipment purchasing supporting those activities has come to a grinding halt.
Translation: "I'm unemployed."
End of story. In the next decade or two, we'll be printing self driving cars, houses, appliances and possibly replacement organs. AI will increasingly replace nurses, security guards, clerks, and others. As time goes by, you're either the person doing the automating, managing the automation or you're unemployed.
It's not a great message for people with no skills, but it's true, nonetheless. There are still service jobs, but there's a limit to these as well.
A guaranteed basic income in exchange for sterilization is an unpopular idea. I know. Got a better one?
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I used to work designing automation equipment. The two biggest factors in deciding to automate are the labor rate and interest rate. If you are going to automate you are looking for a payback between 2-5 years (at least for the industry I was in). Thr Central banks low Intrest policies make this payback much shorter which leads to more automation. If they actually let the market set rates they would be much higher now which would tend to favor hiring more people instead of automation.
I love Jesus, except for his foreign policy.
This is hardly new. There has always been a tradeoff between long term capital investment and the option for using higher cost (per unit manufactured) hand labor. The equation is not just the cost per hour of a person vs. the lifetime cost of a machine. There is often different tradeoffs in quality and flexibility. Due to rising asian labor rates, increased shipping rates, very high Chinese energy costs, the capital cost of product sitting idle in transit and the general brain damage of working with an off shore vendor, manufacturing is moving back to the US. Jobs will not be moving back at nearly the same rate because labor rates are much higher in the US and far fewer americans are willing to stand for eight hours a day snapping together two pieces of plastic. You can expect to see a huge growth in manufacturing engineering jobs and yes even robotics engineers. You can also expect to see changes in product design: faster revision cycles because the engineers are located in the same building/timezone as the factory, different design that make use increased automation vs hand assembly, different material/manufacturing choices to take advantage of different energy/supply chain options and cheaper spare parts.
Sterilization seems overboard. Every woman should be entitled to at least 2x children.
I do think you should be able to buy or sell that entitlement for the total cost of supporting 2x child's living expenses for 18 years.
To avoid inflation, those sales would need to go through an intermediary trust which dispenses the money in 24 payments per year for 18-60 years.
Also, nobody should be able to sell their entitlement until they are 18 years old.
So "yes" to basic income, and "yes" to increasing the basic income for the first 2x children. Take away all 3x basic incomes if they have more than two child though.
This policy would cause a "China" style senior citizen crisis if allowed to run it's course for ~50-60 years so you would have to have lotteries for the remaining fraction of a child which would be necessary to sustain population at replacement levels.
The rise of automation is painfully obvious to anyone who cares to look around. At the same time, there are no jobs that the vast majority of those affected are qualified to do. I worry that a lot of people are going to be pushed into retraining as "techies" and further dilute the talent pool. Seriously, I'm no genius and don't claim to be a rockstar ninja whatever, but I've worked with people who just don't belong near anything technical, at all. Do we really need an influx of factory workers and office drones on top of that?
I've mentioned this before, but think of your typical C student that just barely partied their way through a degree program at Big State University. Traditionally, these C students have landed and held jobs such as (1) random cubicle dweller in the bowels of a large corporation shuffling reports around, (2) low to middle management in large corporations, and (3) state and local government, processing various forms of paperwork or electronic paperwork. Although not too exciting, these jobs are stable, pay decently and allow society to function as-is. There was a _massive_ cut in these paper handling jobs in the 90s, and another in the 2000s, and a lot of these people transitioned to "knowledge workers" or similar -- some found their way to IT also. The problem is that, this time, there are fewer open positions due to automation, offshoring or cloudification of traditional IT jobs. As the amount of intelligence and motivation required to do a job increases, you shut a segment of the workforce out of it, and I believe this is happening now faster than before.
This is even worse for factory workers. Just like the paper pushers, they have a completely uncomplicated job. The bigger problem is that they lack the intelligence to move up the "value chain" even more so than their service worker brethren. I don't know how we're going to solve this macro-level hollowing out of the workforce. Basic income and other proposals aren't going to be workable politically until the vast majority of the population is miserable and un/underemployed. Hopefully we figure something out before civil war breaks out.
Will we be doing it from our flying cars?
While Printing fills an important niche.. It is not going to replace processes that make the whole piece in one shot.
It is not replicator tech.
This is not simply a product of automation. The Government pays companies to ship manual jobs overseas both directly and indirectly. We are producing less _and_ automation is taking away a percentage of the remaining menial jobs.
I really fail to grasp why people "guess" at answers they could easily find if they bothered to try.
-The wise argue that there are few absolutes, the fool argues that there are no probabilities.
subject says it
A distinction that needs to be made: we're bringing manufacturing back to the United States but not necessarily all the manufacturing jobs. Automation and other manufacturing efficiencies developed over the last three decades means we can make more with much few people, and even the quality of those jobs is different from before - in the old days, it would be large numbers of middle class, blue collar jobs. Now, it's a small handful of highly skilled white collar workers and an army of minimum wage individuals who only have their jobs because they're still cheaper than a robot.
Yeah, I have a better idea. Basic income, full stop. For everyone.
We don't need some distopian decrease in population through mandatory sterilization. We have enough to feed, clothe, house, etc. the population, even as it increases. Automation will keep increasing as well.
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...We have enough to feed, clothe, house, etc. the population, even as it increases.
Yes, for a little while, until the cheap (emphasis on cheap) hydrocarbons run out (They will always exist).
Until the mined phosphates run out.
Until enough major aquifers in major agricultural areas run dry.
Until some whackjob with a nuke or two decides that the problem of resource scarcity can be solved by nuking their neighbors.
2100 is going to be the start of an interesting era. I'm grateful that I won't be here for the show. Starvation doesn't suit me.
Please do not read this sig. Thank you.
The attempts to measure "economic freedom" reward despotic countries that have low transactional friction.
Whether it is Heritage, Mercatus, or another favorite anti-American measurement du jour, they ignore any freedom that does not contribute to a economic transaction.
Twitter supports and protects racists - by smearing their critics with the "Hate Speech" label.
The main point still stands - contracting is used as a dodge to benefits or legal requirements.
Any pretense of "flexibility" is almost always in the favor of the agency and client, while the talent is viewed as a problem.
Twitter supports and protects racists - by smearing their critics with the "Hate Speech" label.
Pardon me for going political, but the GOP is either clueless, or echoing propaganda of the rich in exchange for money or favors.
Their idea of "fixing" the economy is to lower taxes and regulations, which will allegedly create some undefined wad of new employment or inventions that stimulate general hiring.
But there is plenty of investment money floating around; it's not the current bottleneck. The rich are already bidding up fishy dot-coms and real-estate to bubble-sniffing levels because they don't know where else to put all their cash, other than overseas factory mines.
I suppose it's true that less regulations may allow us to compete with 3rd world nations, but we would gain the negative conditions of the 3rd world nations to get that (pollution, slave-like hours/treatment, worker injuries, etc.)
Either we need increased socialism, and/or add tariffs on countries with lopsided trade ratios with us. So called "protectionism" is keeping Japan's employment high. True, goods are more expensive there, but perhaps its time to trade "stuff" for jobs. Masses of unemployed are a recipe for trouble.
GOP is living in the 70's. But I guess living in the past is the very essence of "conservatism". They are true to their mission, one can say, even if it's a misguided mission.
Table-ized A.I.
Correction: should be "overseas factories and mines" not "overseas factory mines".
Table-ized A.I.
US GDP is heavily skewed by high-ticket military equipment
This skew actually makes manufacturing a lot less sustainable in the US.
See, the real reason why China is so dominant at this point is that the supply chains have migrated there. Labor costs, adjusted for productivity, tariffs, shipping, etc. have about reached parity.
So, without a good supply chain, you have a hard time being a manufacturer.
The military pays silly prices for stuff. So that means that a company that sells to the military has a silly price sheet. Which means that they're not an option for a non-military manufacturer to use them as a supplier.
The problem is that too many suppliers are getting a taste of that sweet, sweet military money, and there are no available options for "normal" manufacturers. And then, lights out for an entire line of products that could be manufactured here, but won't be.
If the military budget ever gets slashed, expect a manufacturing comeback.
How do I know this? I'm a manufacturer here in the US, and this happens to us constantly.
I see a lot of smug comments about either Democrats (D) or Republicans (R) when the reality is that both parties have done their best, at the behest of their well heeled sponsors, to have the rich get richer while the 99% gets the shaft. "Free trade" deals have been done under both D and R and in both cases created a race to the bottom that decimated the middle class. Wages have been stagnant since the early 70s, and in the past 40+ years there have been multiple D and R administrations. This is not a partisan issue, both D and R sold us out.
There's a conservative, a working man and a Union man at a table with 10 cookies. The conservative snatches up 9 cookies and gobbles them up. Then he turns to the working man and says "Hey, watch out, that guys gonna eat your cookie".
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Software, manufacturing, what's the difference now? Most the the manufacturing we do involves designing it in front of a laptop for a week then pressing "go" on the 3d printers.
That conclusion is based on a simplistic analysis of tax records, not taking account demographic changes and not taking into account the vastly increased amounts of government services and benefits people increase. Furthermore, increases in government benefits and services primarily hurt the middle class, because that's who necessarily has to pay for it.
So, some people get rich through political corruption and that hurts the country. A lot of that political corruption is, in fact, directly related to increases in government services, because the easiest way to get money from the government is to get the government spend it on your products, whether it is military aircraft or drugs, and that spending is necessarily paid for through taxes. Other political corruption is based on giving tax breaks or financial support to the middle class for things specific industries lobby to sell, whether it's houses, solar cells, or education.
"The rich" vs "the 99%" is a false dichotomy. There is clearly a lot of crony capitalism in this country, but there are also clearly many more people who got rich through hard work and without crony capitalism. If you take money away from "the rich" in general because some people who have money happen to be corrupt, you are throwing out the baby with the bathwater and you're not fixing the problem.
We'll be using bioenginered bacteria to make cheap hydrocarbons long before 2100, and cheaper than drilling them.
Reclaiming phosphates seems the hardest problem. And I don't know that much about it, but assume it's solvable.
The aquifers, like all water issues will get solved by desalination. The major agricultural areas will move to where water can be used from the sea.
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That conclusion is based on a simplistic analysis of tax records, not taking account demographic changes and not taking into account the vastly increased amounts of government services and benefits people increase.
I agree that there are lots of ways to arrange the data, however all of them show that wages for most people are stagnant or in some cases falling. If you look at the average wage vs productivity, a slightly different argument but still relevant, you find that wages have not risen proportionally with productivity though they largely did until the 70s. The poor have done much better comparatively speaking due to the government programs you mentioned. Taxing at rates comparable to earlier years is not throwing out the baby with the bath water. Having a graduated capital gains tax would be awesome since that's where all the gains in income have been. Using the NSA's mass surveillance to track down off shore money would be a great idea. There are a lot of things that can and should be done but "free trade", corruption, barely taxing wealth especially capital gains, and off shore money should all be addressed. So far only Bernie and Trump are touching any of these topics so I'm not optimistic.
yeah mr communist, whatever you say. why dont you just relocate to jerusalem or to pyongyang ?
or are you actually paid by big oil ? thosr fuckers will be replaced by my thorium reactor. something we had running at large scale here.
and for the phosphate our generals and scientists will find a fix, like we did when we ran out of salpeter. or when we ran out of benzin. or when we had to eliminate russia as an enemy.
we build so many bridges for you commies. just use one.
"Wages" are the wrong measure; you need to look at the combination of wages, non-wage compensation, working hours, defined benefits, government programs, and insurance. Second, you need to look at the workforce and demographics: as more women enter the workforce, as more family activities get turned into jobs, and as fewer people are married, of course, wages drop.
People like "Bernie" are the primary cause of both the nominal stagnation of wages (by forcing people to pay for crap they don't want or need), and for the generally slow growth of the economy. If you want to wreck our economy and economic future completely, vote for Bernie.
Of course it is: higher tax rates will cause companies, and increasingly workers, to (legally) evade taxes, or even flee the country to live where tax burdens are lower.
But even if we could tax at higher rates, what for? So that Bernie or Hillary or whoever can engage in even more crony capitalism?
But even if we could tax at higher rates, what for? So that Bernie or Hillary or whoever can engage in even more crony capitalism?
You touch on what I consider to be one of the largest wrongs of the current way of doing things. If the rich are taxed more what is done with the tax proceeds? That's a fair question that I don't think gets enough attention. The current thinking is to give ever more to the poor such that for many people being a non-working person is advantageous over being a entry level or minimum wage worker. That's just morally wrong. Non-working people should *never* have it better than working people. My personal suggestion is to do something that would affect all productive people not just the poor and especially not the non-working. So I'd suggest taking the taxes and giving them out as a quarterly bonus to anyone who had worked that quarter with no means testing. Legal workers get a bonus, lazy people and those here illegally or working under the table don't. I don't care why you aren't working (ie don't care if you're retired, on medical leave, laid off, fired, can't find a job - really don't care). This could also be done with tariffs. I'm not naive enough to think that this situation would be allowed to last in a pure form, but one can dream.
"Has worked" by what criteria? Did they do anything useful? Does some artist who produces shitty paintings nobody wants get money?
What about a system in which, if you do something useful for your fellow human beings, they give you tokens rewarding you, and how many tokens you have indicates how valuable you are to society?
Well, there is such a system: the free market, and the tokens are called "dollars". The only problem is that we don't actually implement this system very well, since the government keeps deciding that normal people don't know what they really want and that these tokens need to be redistributed according to other schemes.
By has worked I meant a job, as in the kind that pays wages and taxes. I hear your concern that the free market does much of this, however inequality is a greater concern than keeping a "pure" free market. Moreover the market is anything but free or else we'd be able to buy prescription drugs from Canada at 1/3 the cost. What's your plan for improving things?
Why is "inequality" a concern? We should make sure nobody starves, but beyond that, I don't see inequality as a problem.
While some inequality may be due to lack of fairness, if you give government the power to redress unfair situations, it will invariably abuse that power, and the cure is worse than the disease.
Which is why I said: "The only problem is that we don't actually implement this system [the free market] very well,"
Remove restrictions on the market; reduce regulations; privatize; stop worrying about inequality.
Now, such a transition is painful. Privatization involves enormous amounts of corruption (after all, who are you going to give all those publicly owned resources to) until finally market forces start operating again. And workers not used to operating in a free market and viewing themselves as a valuable resource rather than a wage slave are going to screw up for a while. It's still the right thing to do.