New figures released Monday weren’t promising, and factory job growth is stagnant.
The November jobs figures will be released on Friday, offering the opportunity to reflect on how the manufacturing sector has faired since President Trump was elected about three years ago.
Trump road into office promising a manufacturing renaissance, and pledging to bring back millions of American factory jobs. But while he got off to a strong start his first two years in the White House — about 440,000 new factory jobs have been created in his term thus far — things haven’t gone as well in recent months.
In fact, manufacturing job creation has become stagnant over the past year. The manufacturing sector lost 36,000 jobs in October and 2,000 jobs in September, according to the Bureau of Labor and Statistics. Industrial heartland states like Ohio, Michigan and Pennsylvania all have been losing factory jobs in 2019.
As AAM President Scott Paul told USA Today: “Trump has fallen short of his goal.”
So, what’s going on?
For one, China. While Trump continues to “hope” for a fair trade deal with China, nothing has been put into place (not even that “phase one” deal). That’s created a lot of uncertainty, and many companies are opting to delay hiring or not make investments until the outcome is more clear.
It’s critical that Team Trump secure a real trade deal with China, one that will finally address China’s litany of unfair trade practices, including unfair subsidies, intellectual property theft, and forced technology transfers.
And let’s not forget to mention that industrial overcapacity continues to be an issue globally. Take steel. Although Trump’s steel tariffs helped stabilize the American steel industry in 2018, the overall problem of China’s steel overcapacity remains — and China’s decision to leave the G20 Global Forum on Steel Excess Capacity isn’t a good sign that it plans to address the problem on its own.
But there’s other things that can be done outside of China to boost the manufacturing sector and create jobs, including a long-awaited infrastructure investment package.
Although #InfrastructureWeek has become a bit of a running gag on social media, there’s no doubt that action to rebuild America’s crumbling roads, bridges, transit systems, airports, pipelines, drinking water systems, and more will create millions of new jobs. It’s also tremendously popular across party lines.
In the meantime, though, we’ll be waiting to see what the latest factory jobs numbers reveal when they are released on Friday. Given that the Institute for Supply Management’s latest findings showed manufacturing is contracting, we don’t expect the kind of massive factory job growth that the president promised.