However much credit President Trump may deserve, there’s no question that jobs in manufacturing — long the sick child of the U.S. economy — have turned up nicely since he took office.
What’s not so clear is how much good that surge has done for hundreds of thousands of American factory workers.
Wages for manufacturing have not kept up with other parts of the economy, a fact Trump avoids when he boasts across the nation’s heartland that he is fulfilling his promise to revitalize American industry. More recently, hiring at factories has slowed.
Manufacturing wage gains have lagged so much that, for the first time on record, the average hourly pay for all factory workers this year is less than for employees in service businesses, according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics.
The difference is small — $27.38 an hour for manufacturing versus $27.47 for service jobs, based on March data — but the gap nonetheless marks a striking reversal of historical trends and a further diminishing of the once-unquestioned idea that manufacturing was the surest ticket to economic security for workers.
“Once upon a time it was true — manufacturing was key to the middle class,” said Mark Zandi, chief economist at Moody’s Analytics. Today, that’s changed.
Decades of declining industrial jobs have contributed to stagnant wages, widening income disparity and economic malaise in smaller cities and rural communities — conditions that Trump has correctly identified. But in putting so much emphasis on manufacturing, Trump is making too much of a good thing, analysts say.
In addition to earnings lagging behind, the number of factory jobs today remains far behind the service sector. Manufacturing accounts for just 10 percent of overall private sector employment, down from 16 percent in 2000 and 25 percent in 1980.
There’s no going back, Zandi said. “We’ve got to focus on the services.”
To be sure, making things remains an important part of the American economy, especially high-tech goods. And those jobs still provide some of the best opportunities for workers without college degrees. But Trump’s focus on manufacturing could encourage workers — especially young people entering the labor market without advanced education — to overlook the greater opportunities they might have in the service sector, some analysts warn.
The Trump administration recently noted that total unfilled job openings now outnumber the total number of jobless Americans, whereas five years ago there were two unemployed persons for every job opening. That’s not so for blue-collar workers, however. Unemployed workers in manufacturing and construction still significantly outnumber job openings.
Why push people to where jobs are relatively scarce? asked Benn Steil, an economist at the Council on Foreign Relations, a nonpartisan think tank. He says the Trump administration could better help blue-collar workers by supporting their transition to services.
Manufacturing payrolls sank to about 11.5 million in 2010 thanks to the Great Recession, then started to climb back up before hitting a wall in 2015 and 2016. Factory employment has since risen by about 450,000 jobs — something Trump routinely brags about in speeches. (He said incorrectly in Las Vegas earlier this month that manufacturing was up 600,000 jobs since he was elected.)
Wage gains, however, have been scarce. Workers in industries such as metals and industrial machines have done well, but those employed at plants making motor vehicles, medical equipment, semiconductors, chemicals and pharmaceuticals, among others, have seen little or no gain in their hourly pay since early 2017.
