Labor & Employment Law

Poll: More Manufacturing Can Stop Economic Slide

By James Parks

In the global economic race, the United States is coming in second?and one of the major reasons is that we have stopped making things in this country. A recent poll shows the public thinks it?s going to be that way for awhile. Only one in five Americans say the U.S. economy is the world’s strongest. Nearly half (47 percent) say China?s economy is stronger and only one in three expects the United States to regain the top spot in the next 20 years. Nearly three-fifths of those surveyed say that increasing competition from lower-paid workers around the world will keep living standards for average Americans from growing as fast as they did in the past. 

The poll, conducted for Allstate/National Journal Heartland Monitor,  found that behind the public’s concerns are the related issues of the global economy and the loss of manufacturing jobs. Nearly 60 percent say the nation cannot continue to lose manufacturing jobs. 

The uneasiness over the global economy is reflected in responses to the question of whether free trade has been good or bad for the United States. Only college educated whites, people ages 18 to 29 and folks making more than $75,000 think free trade has been good for the nation. Everybody else across racial, economic and education lines are clear that it has not helped.

The main reason people cite for the lack of faith in free trade is that it encourages employers to ship jobs overseas. When asked why manufacturing has declined, 58 percent of respondents say U.S. manufacturers have shifted jobs overseas to take advantage of cheap labor to achieve higher profits.

Matt Hemmis, sales director for a resort company in Orlando, Fla., summed up the situation this way in a follow-up interview:

We have become a service nation instead of a working nation. The only thing we have that spreads around the world is our music and our culture. But can we survive as a nation of culture? We have no mass production in our country. You can barely find cars or clothes made in this country anymore.

Ruben Owen, a retired Boeing engineer in Seattle, adds:

We’ve become more of a service economy. We send things out here and there [to be produced] and never understand how to manufacture the whole product; we just assemble it. In the long run, that’s not good for our business health.

The poll was conducted for Heartland by Ed Reilly and Brent McGoldrick of FD, a communications strategy consulting firm. They surveyed 1,200 adults from Nov. 29 through Dec. 1. For a full analysis of the poll, click here.

In many ways, the Heartland poll reaffirms the conclusions from another poll this summer by Mark Mellman and Whit Ayers in which 86 percent of the respondents say they back increased government support for manufacturing. A whopping 95 percent believe Congress and the president should spend more time creating jobs, and 85 percent believe they should focus on creating manufacturing jobs.

Full post as published by AFL-CIO NOW BLOG on January 02, 2011 (boomark / email).