We need to bring the trades & factories back
Whether you blame it on NAFTA or not, 8 million American manufacturing jobs were outsourced between 1979-2009.
The midwest was hurt the most, laying the groundwork for never ending Ohio memes.
For over 150 years, the job market has morphed with these sort of changes to support American prosperity.
The largest changes in the workforce distribution have been agriculture and manufacturing with agricultural employment falling from 60% of the total workforce in 1850 to less than 3% today, and manufacturing falling from 26% in 1960 to less than 10% today.
Most of the jobs that replaced those are white collar jobs. Office work, professional services, ... etc.
White-collar workers increased from 17.6% of total employment in 1900 to 59.9% in 2002. And in 2023, American workers still largely depend on white collar jobs.
AI and overseas outsourcing are closing in on the cushy office jobs.
The AI Wave
Every single entry to mid-level office task is going to be automated with Large Language AI Models (LLMs) - programs that can replicate text similar to how a human does. ChatGPT and Google Bard are just the beginning.
The next decade will make LLM's more dynamic with both specialized AI's to certain industries to do increasingly technical work.
The Remote Work Wave
Why is Deel the fastest growing SaaS in history? They made it incredibly easy to hire workers overseas, and US companies love it. American workers are trying so hard not to come back to the office that companies are just shipping their jobs overseas.
Obviously there will always be a place for the very specialized knowledge sector work in America, but a large percentage of white collar work can be done by a harder working individual overseas with a Grammarly account.
There's a billion people in India and they are hungrier than you.
https://www.washingtonpost.com/business/2022/08/26/remote-work-outsourcing-globalization/
Hiring Trends Right Now
Just looking at employment numbers at face value things are looking good right now. The nation's unemployment rate close to a 50-year low, interest rates are under control, and the economy is chugging along.
There's a small hiring nuance that is drastically under-reported:
Ever since the Covid 19 pandemic, American companies have hit the brakes on white collar hiring.
https://www.employamerica.org/blog/white-collar-layoffs-are-starting-to-show/
While at the same time, companies are
https://www.founderjar.com/outsourcing-statistics/
https://www.ibisworld.com/united-states/market-research-reports/manufacturing-industry/
What will happen if nothing is done?
Now I'm not a doomsday guy. I side with Warren Buffet's "never bet against America" train of thought.
But, the shifts in hiring overseas have already started, and the cat is out of the bag as far as AI goes. America needs to adapt quickly or else millions of workers will be displaced.