Where All The Jobs Go?

Reposted From May 25, 2010

Once upon a time America had a super abundant number of jobs for middle class of workers.

Model T Ford (1908)



Where'd All Those Jobs Go?
Well here's a clue...


I'm not even going to pretend I have answers, but the fact is once upon a time this nation became the richest nation on earth because the majority of us were hard working middle class Americans. Our current economic woes will never be resolved unless we can figure out some sort of solution to restore at least a semblance of this once again.

Failing that, government revenues will continue to plummet w/o resolution.

Over my 33 years in production (since 1973) I saw first hand the vanishing middle class..

Where once there were over 30 workers employed throughout the plant
across three shifts hand stacking pallets, they were replaced with this..

I ran up to 6 of these palletizers at a time in the department where I worked
We put out about 300 pallets a shift.
Prior 10 workers were required to hand stack.

On the other end, the "De-Palletizing" equipment
replaced about 10 other workers.

Think about that. 20 workers were replaced by one single operator (me) and this took place over 10 years ago!

Where there was once dozens upon dozens of workers hand packing..


Some companies' warehouses are even automated!


The worst part about all of this, most of our automated equipment was bought overseas. This in turn also reduced our maintaince personnel requirements since the company bought long term service contracts from the machine manufacturers. I recall servicemen flying in from Italy, Germany and elsewhere.

Machines require no benefits, sick days and can not become injured. They most certainly don't have labor complaints either.

No one's faulting these company's for utilizing what becomes available. The fact does remain however, that the middle class American worker has now become nearly extinct.

The argument that these machines require engineers and assembly which provides employment is offset by the dozens of workers replaced by them.

Like I stated earlier, I have no resolutions. Until someone figures out how to get the majority of it's less skilled blue collar middle workforce back into play, this nation will continue to suffer it's current economic woes far as one can perceive into the future.
That's Just The Situation We're In!


UPDATED 05/26/2010

USA TODAY:"Paychecks from private business shrank to their smallest share of personal income in U.S. history during the first quarter of this year..

The trend is not sustainable, says University of Michigan economist Donald Grimes"