Sunday, September 12, 2010
The dwindling U.S. economy
The last lightbulb factory in the U.S. is closing, and, the "green jobs" panacea promised by Obama and a host of other politicians notwithstanding, the fact is that there isn't a single CFL factory in the U.S.
And here's the sobering statistic from the article:
The number of manufacturing jobs in the United States has been shrinking for decades, from 19.5 million in 1979 to 11.6 million this year, a decline of 40 percent.And if they had considered that as a percentage of the U.S. population, rather than as a simple constant amount, the shrinkage would be even more dramatic; the population has grown from 225 million in 1980 to 310 million now, meaning that the percentage of people working in manufacturing has declined from 8.8% in 1979 to 3.7% now.
