As another month passes, the great schism inside the American labor force get wider. We are referring to the unprecedented divergence between the total number of high-paying manufacturing jobs, and minimum-wage food service and drinking places jobs, aka waiters and bartenders. In August, according to the BLS, while the number of people employed by “food services and drinking places” rose by another 34,000, the US workforce lost another 14,000 manufacturing workers.
The chart below puts this in context: since 2014, the US had added 523,000 waiters and bartenders, and has lost 13,000 manufacturing workers.
While we would be the first to congraulte the new American waiter and bartender class, something does not smell quite right. On one hand, there has been a spike in recent restaurant bankruptcies or mass closures (Logan’s, Fox and Hound, Bob Evans), which has failed to reflect in the government report. However, what we find more suspect, is that according to the BLS’ seasonally adjusted “data”, starting in March of 2010 and continuing through August of 2016, there has been just one month in which restaurant workers lost jobs, and alternatively, jobs for waiters and bartenders have increased in 77 out of the past 78 months.
We are curious what this “data” series will look like after it is revised by the BLS shortly after the NBER declares the official start of the next recession.
520,000 waiters/waitresses? Hell yeah, must serve champagne and caviar to those 1 percenters!
Greetings,
The PTB like to tell us that we do not need manufacturing as we are the “brains” behind all this great new stuff. Lets see if that is true.
70% of all new patents now come from China. Manufacturing leads to innovation as the people directly involved with building stuff are the people that are going to figure out better ways to do things. Our waiters, waitresses and gender studies majors are not the ones coming up with anything new.
1.4 billion smart phones were manufactured last year. How many were made in the USA? Zero. This holds true for monitors, laptops or pretty much everything you see in your local *mart.
In the end I’m not sure it is a good idea to have your entire economy held hostage in such a way. If China stopped shipping stuff to us or some conflict in the pacific shut down this one way trade from Asia then it would 100% collapse our economy pretty much overnight.
The war is over, we lost.
If we just get rid of all The Illegal Beaners than we can add 14 million painter jobs, lawn service jobs, farm jobs, and 90% of Walmart jobs, etc. That would make the jobs report so much spiffier.
Either that or get the Donkey Show industry ramped up on the north side of the border.
Here’s something missing from the data:
Of those 520,000 waiter and bartender jobs, how many of those positions have been filled by people working a 2nd job? It’s becoming common two hold 2-3 part time jobs since Obamacare killed the 40 hour work week.
There are over 7 million multiple job holders according to the BLS.
Sure as hell that there was an Internet Bubble, and a Housing Bubble, and soon to be an Auto Financing Bubble…. There will be a Restaurant Bubble.
Right now Millennials see no problem with spending $10-$12 for a lunch. Hell there are bars with $15 specialty drinks. A dinner for two at Red Lobster (a true corporate restaurant) is $60 between entree’s, a glass of wine, tip, and tax. When in reality, you could have the same meal at home for about $15 and it would take no longer, than the complete travel/service time at a restaurant.
It’s going to happen.
FWIW: http://cnsnews.com/news/article/terence-p-jeffrey/government-workers-now-outnumber-manufacturing-workers-9932000
Of those 520,000 waiters and bar tenders I can say I haven’t been all that impressed with service, in fact I say it has gotten pretty rotten over the years.
I worked in a restaurant when I was in college, started as a dishwasher and moved on to waiter. People would come to simply have me wait on them, I’d shower them with service. You know why? Tips, and I made some pretty good money.
About 6 months ago my fiance and I were in a Denny’s and the waitress was running around like a chicken with her head cut off. It was so bad I didn’t care about the sh*tty service I actually felt pity for the incompetence of it all (her stupidity and the stupidity of whoever supervised her for not training her). I don’t think anybody in that place got what they ordered that evening. The level of service that I’ve seen especially by people 30 or younger is pretty pathetic.
No worries I tip according to service.
I gave up on Denny’s about 2 years ago. It’s pathetic.
Manufacturing will continue to dwindle away, at approximately a 2% loss of workers per year owing to improvement in efficiency, plus or minus gains/losses of jobs overseas.
No matter the global situation, manufacturing employment will continue to trickle down until it hits about 3 to 4% of total employment.
Given around half of workers once worked in manufacturing – the engine of he middle class – the drop has and will continue to have a significant impact on standard of living of the US middle class.
Nothing – and I mean nothing – can stop the decline in workers required. The decline might be very temporarily interrupted, by re-importing some jobs, but it will re-commence, driven by automation, soon enough.