LLPOH’s Grim Reality #2

This is an adjunct to Grim Reality #1. The following article, from The Washington Post, details how the US has lost some 687,000 high tech jobs in the last ten years – a decline of 28%. These jobs have gone to – you guessed it – China.

 http://www.washingtonpost.com/business/economy/us-losing-high-tech-manufacturing-jobs-to-asia/2012/01/17/gIQA9P1S6P_story.html?hpid=z4

Some salient points, in addition to the job losses, include:

– Research and development expenditures in China now matches that of the US. Of course, given their cost advantage, that implies that they are spending vastly more man-hours on R+D than is the US. Additionally, nine other nations world-wide now spend as much as the US on R+D.

– Doctoral degrees in engineering in China have doubled in the ten years and their output in this area now far exceeds that of the US. No surprise there.

– US multinationals are hiring great numbers of overseas research workers

– “Although the long decline of manufacturing employment in the United States is often attributed to the cheaper wages in developing countries, China and developing countries in Asia have in recent years sought to lure more sophisticated manufacturing operations — and better jobs — by expanding their engineering prowess through government investment in education and research.” Government investment in education and research – now there is a thought. Bet they aren’t investing in art history.

– It also says that China’s cost advantage is shrinking. However, it attributes a lot of that to America’s automation of its factories, which reduces labor cost per unit. So there is not a lot of joy there.

So, in sum, the US is under attack not only in manufacturing but in high tech as well. And service jobs (IT/accounting/etc.) are also under attack, but that is a story for another day. Oh happy days are here again.