Katie McGinty Quotes

The loss of manufacturing jobs is a sign of economic health.

There is a trend worth worrying about, which is the disappearance of manufacturing jobs from the workforce. Shortly after World War II, about one-quarter of employed Americans held manufacturing jobs. Now less than one-tenth do. From the perspective of individual businesses, this change is natural and desirable—rising productivity by definition means fewer people making more things. But it is troublesome for society as a whole, since factory jobs have historically buoyed the middle class and given rise to future industries and jobs, virtuous-cycle style.

The U.S. is becoming an industrial heartland again.

Globally, manufacturing jobs are on the decline, simply because productivity growth has outpaced growth in demand.

We envision a more Germany-style economy, where 20 percent of our workforce is in manufacturing. And we're not talking about banging tin in the back room. We're talking about high technology across the board, whether it's computer chips or cars or anything in between.

As our farms and factories grew more efficient, they accounted for a shrinking share of our economy. And the more productive agriculture and manufacturing became, the fewer people they employed.

One of the good things that's happening in manufacturing in Mexico is that the old maquiladora that was relegated to just assembling things has changed in different sectors. One of these sectors is the aerospace industry and in how we attract workers that have been in technical school.

In the four decades after World War II, manufacturing jobs paid more than other jobs for given skills. But that is much less true today. Increased international competition has forced American manufacturers to reduce costs. As a result, the pay premium for low-skilled workers in manufacturing is smaller than it once was.

As an economic historian, I appreciate what manufacturing has contributed to the United States. It was the engine of growth that allowed us to win two world wars and provided millions of families with a ticket to the middle class. But public policy needs to go beyond sentiment and history.

You lose manufacturing jobs, you rarely ever get them back again.

Although the number of manufacturing jobs in the United States has stagnated, dropping 12 percent from a high in the early 1980s, the number of retail jobs has risen 43 percent.

At a time when we are losing manufacturing jobs in this country, we should be doing everything we can to help our manufacturers stay competitive. They are the backbone of our economy.

This 21st century economy holds great promise for our people. But unless we give all Americans the skills they need to succeed, countries like India and China will take good-paying jobs that should be ours.

We have come to the point where a new machine invented in England deprives millions of Chinese workers of their livelihood within a year's time.

Technology has been advancing so fast that the number of jobs globally in manufacturing is declining. There is no way that Trump can bring significant numbers of manufacturing jobs back to the U.S.

Trump can bring jobs back, but they will be minimal-wage jobs, not the high-paying jobs of the 1950s.

For food service industry and retail, I'm for the minimum wage being increased to at least $12. Not for manufacturing. Software and robotics are going to revolutionize manufacturing in the next 10 years. In the meantime, we have to compete with overseas manufacturing.

When the manufacturing decline began in earnest in 2001, the main culprits were the offshoring of jobs to China, with which we have no trade deal, and automation.

There were a lot of manufacturing jobs lost over a long period of time and particularly after - during the Great Recession. We've had some recovery in manufacturing employment as the economy's recovered.

By the time I was leaving school, there were no factories. There was no industry.

Tech is important, but if you look at even the successful tech start-ups, you see they employ only dozens of people at most. Tech is never going to have the impact on the job market that manufacturing has.

While the developed world has shifted from agriculture to manufacturing and then to services, the number of jobs has always climbed.

We want to make America great again. We want to bring back our industry, we want to bring back our jobs from China and Japan, and by the way Mexico, which has taken so many of our jobs. And that's what it's about. I have not heard about these incidences.

I am proud of the fact that the U.K. is an open trading country. I welcome inward investment such as that of Nissan, and the takeover of struggling British companies by foreign companies who turn them around, as in the case of Jaguar Land Rover. I also accept that job losses sometimes have to occur to restore failing companies to health.

While China succeeded in transferring nearly 150 million people from agriculture to manufacturing, we could not do so, due to lack of skilled manpower.