> OK but if that’s the case, how come other countries — Germany, Korea, France, etc. — have managed to increase their manufacturing productivity over the past 13 years? One possibility is that they’re just catching up to the U.S. and Japan, which were the leaders in manufacturing productivity back in the early 1990s. I can’t find a great data set comparing absolute levels of manufacturing productivity across countries over time, but I’ll keep looking.
This is what I wanted to see as I was reading through the whole article. Everything was about the change in growth, but I wanted to know, in absolute terms, the ranking of countries in manufacturing productivity.
Now, I don't really think the US has hit some sort of maximum in productivity, and the growth we see in other countries is just laggards catching up to us. But it's something that needs to be examined, too.
The numbers for Total Factor Productivity presented at the end may shed some light on this, but, as the author admits, the numbers presented might not be trustworthy, and, regardless, it would still be useful to see how it breaks down.
> the growth we see in other countries is just laggards catching up to us. But it's something that needs to be examined, too.
This was documented in the 1990s [0] with a smaller sample of OECD members (OECD only expanded significantly in the 2000s) as well as in the CEE within the EU in the 2010s [1].
And you can see this anecdotally as well in industries ranging from Electronics Assembly to Resource Refining to Pharmaceutical Manufacturing.
The US hasn't gotten poorer - other countries have gotten WAAAAAAY richer and increasingly skilled.
> the ranking of countries in manufacturing productivity
Imo, Calculating Manufacturing productivity has issues. For example, there's a bit of an assumption that it was Chinese factories that took jobs from factories in the Midwest when it was mostly movement to the South and then Mexico in the 80s-90s. Then they left for China, and then the lower value chain producers there began offshoring as well by 2015-16.
I think there are a lot of well read (but not necessarily smart) HNers who think manufacturing is singular and it's easy to train someone used to assembling toys to helping assemble LTO batteries.
This is what I wanted to see as I was reading through the whole article. Everything was about the change in growth, but I wanted to know, in absolute terms, the ranking of countries in manufacturing productivity.
Now, I don't really think the US has hit some sort of maximum in productivity, and the growth we see in other countries is just laggards catching up to us. But it's something that needs to be examined, too.
The numbers for Total Factor Productivity presented at the end may shed some light on this, but, as the author admits, the numbers presented might not be trustworthy, and, regardless, it would still be useful to see how it breaks down.