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Economic Commentary

Why Are We Losing Manufacturing Jobs?

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In the last 50 years, the share of employment in manufacturing has declined in the United States. The main reason for this phenomenon is labor-saving technological progress. Variation among state tax polices and international economic conditions have played only minor roles. The source of future prosperity will be technological advances in a service-oriented economy.

07.01.2004EC 7/1/2004

The views authors express in Economic Commentary are theirs and not necessarily those of the Federal Reserve Bank of Cleveland or the Board of Governors of the Federal Reserve System. The series editor is Tasia Hane. This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0 International License. This paper and its data are subject to revision; please visit clevelandfed.org for updates.

Suggested Citation

Fisher, Eric. 2004. “Why Are We Losing Manufacturing Jobs?” Federal Reserve Bank of Cleveland, Economic Commentary 7/1/2004.

This work by Federal Reserve Bank of Cleveland is licensed under Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0 International