>The manufacturing sector lost 341,000 jobs in 1999.
-250,000, Dec 98-99; total job gain, 2.7 million. -101,000, Apr 99-00; total job gain, 3 million. Manufacturing has gained 217,000 since NAFTA took effect.
Manufacturing production was up 4.9%, Dec 98-99; it's up 5.9%, Mar 99-00. Manufacturing production is up 39% since NAFTA took effect. . . .
If NAFTA were damaging the manufacturing sector as much as you say, wouldn't that show up in production? Isn't rising output and flattish employment another way of describing the productivity miracle everybody's been celebrating? Doug
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It might or, evidently, might not, but what we're interested in is employment and living standards. Cuz we're a bunch o' bolsheviki, so to speak.
In the latter regard, the past two years have been exceptional and if that sort of thing continued the trade issue would wither away. But it's a little premature to attribute the correlates of 3.9% unemployment to recent trade liberalization. By contrast, the withering of manufacturing and the flight of manufacturing jobs is a long-standing pattern.
Productivity growth could mean same jobs, more output, as you note, or it could mean more jobs, and even more output, as workers would prefer in light of the experience of the past three decades.
I'll try to have an answer to the other stuff you mentioned first, lest I emulate MHL, but later.
mbs