Tag: jobs
President Trump

Why Does Trump Want Lousy, Low-Paid Jobs For His Supporters?

There has almost certainly never been a president who has moved so rapidly to screw the people who put him in office. While Trump lost among more educated voters, he won a solid majority among workers without college degrees and especially white workers without college degrees.

Ordinarily a politician looks to reward their backers. Trump has certainly done plenty to reward his big contributors, and surely will do much more, but he seems to being doing everything possible to harm the moderate and middle-income workers who backed him in large numbers.

This started with things like trying to shut down the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau, which cracks down on banks, credit companies, insurers and others ripping off their customers. We also have the efforts of DOGE to eliminate the IRS's Direct File program, a system that makes it cheap and easy for ordinary workers to file their tax returns. Trump, along with his co-president Elon Musk, are trying to eliminate the National Labor Relations Board, the agency that protects workers’ right to form unions.

Then we have Donald Trump’s plan to whack ordinary people with massive import taxes, which he announced on April 2nd, which he also called “Liberation Day.” Trump’s allies in Congress want to use the money from Trump’s import taxes, together with massive cuts to Medicaid, which also disproportionately benefits moderate-income voters, to offset the lost revenue for big tax cuts to the rich.

But Trump has a truly Trumpian story that he is telling his backers to justify it all. He promised to bring back manufacturing jobs by having more goods produced in America. There are plenty of problems with this plan, as Jared Bernstein and I outlined in a column a few weeks back. It is very unlikely he will be able to regain a large number of manufacturing jobs. Even if we eliminated the trade deficit completely, the share of manufacturing in total employment would just rise from 8.0 percent to 9.0 percent.

But the story gets even worse. If we go back 50 years, manufacturing were good jobs, offering higher pay and benefits than most other jobs in the economy. This was especially true for workers without college degrees, who often could support a family and put kids through college on the wages they earned in manufacturing jobs. (This is mostly a story about men, as readers likely recognize.)

But the reason manufacturing jobs were good jobs half a century ago is that they were disproportionately union jobs. Roughly a third of manufacturing workers were in unions, compared to just 15 percent for the rest of the private sector. This is no longer the case. At present, only 8.0 percent of manufacturing workers are in unions, only slightly higher than the 6.0 percent for the rest of the private labor force. As a result, manufacturing jobs are no longer especially good jobs.

If we just look at production and non-supervisory workers, a category that covers 80 percent of the workforce, but excludes supervisors and high-end professional workers, the average hourly wage for workers in manufacturing in 2024 was $27.78 an hour. That is almost 8.0 percent less than the $30.13 average for all production and non-supervisory workers. This is not a full comparison. We would have to consider benefits, as well as controlling for factors like education, location, and gender to do a full comparison. But it is unlikely that even with full controls we would find that manufacturing jobs paid a substantial premium compared to other jobs in the economy.

The graph below compares the hourly wage for production and supervisory workers in manufacturing with the average hourly wage in other industries.

Source: Bureau of Labor Statistics

As can be seen the pay in manufacturing is substantially lower than in several other major industries. Pay in trucking averages $29.77 an hour, more than 7.0 percent higher than the wage for manufacturing workers. FWIW, more trade likely means more workers employed in trucking. The pay for workers in utilities averages $45.37, more than 63 percent above the average pay in manufacturing.

The average pay for workers in banks averages $30.24, almost 9.0 percent above the pay in manufacturing. Note that we are excluding bank managers and professionals from this calculation, so these highly paid workers are not distorting the calculation. The average pay for workers in healthcare was $34.69 an hour, almost 25 percent higher than the average for manufacturing workers. It’s true that many of these workers have college degrees or at least some education beyond high school, but that will also be true for many workers in manufacturing who have done an apprenticeship or gone to a community college or trade school.

There are some industries where workers clearly do worse than manufacturing. The average pay in retail is just $20.94 an hour, almost 25 percent less than the pay in manufacturing. In hotels and restaurants, the average is just $19.54 an hour, almost 30 percent less than in manufacturing. Manufacturing workers are clearly doing better than workers in these industries, but manufacturing no longer stands out as an especially high-paying sector.

If the Trump deal is that moderate and middle-income workers will pay much higher taxes due to his tariffs, but will be somewhat more likely to get manufacturing jobs as a result of his “reindustrialization” strategy, it does not look like a very good one.

Dean Baker is an economist, author, and co-founder of the Center for Economic Policy and Research. His writing has appeared in many major publications, including The Atlantic, The Washington Post, and The Financial Times. Please consider subscribing to his Substack Dean Baker.

Reprinted with permission from Substack.

Trump Tariffs Are Already Throwing Americans Out Of Their Jobs

Trump Tariffs Are Already Throwing Americans Out Of Their Jobs

On Thursday —one day after President Donald Trump’s self-branded "Liberation Day"— 900 auto workers in Michigan and Indiana were “liberated” from their jobs, thanks to Trump’s new tariffs.

Stellantis NV, which manufactures Ram trucks and Jeeps, announced on Thursday that 900 U.S. workers across five facilities were being temporarily laid off, directly citing Trump’s 25% tariffs on imported cars as the cause.

"With the new automotive sector tariffs now in effect, it will take our collective resilience and discipline to push through this challenging time. But we will quickly adapt to these policy changes and will protect our company, maintain our competitive edge and continue delivering great products to our customers,” Antonio Filosa, chief operating officer of Stellantis North America, said.

The news broke as Commerce Secretary Howard Lutnick appeared on CBS News to declare that employment will boom because of Trump's sweeping tariffs.

"You're going to see employment leaping starting today," he said.

Meanwhile, economists were lighting their hair on fire to warn just how damaging Trump's tariff policy will actually be.

“Monstrously destructive, incoherent, ill-informed tariffs based on fabrications, imagined wrongs, discredited theories and ignorance of decades of evidence. And the real tragedy is that they will hurt working Americans more than anyone else,” Justin Wolfers, an economics professor at the University of Michigan, wrote on X.

And, with approximately 134 million households across the United States, Trump’s tariffs will amount to a $5,000 tax increase on every household, according to Wolfers.

The stock market is also responding in kind, with the markets losing more than 3% of their value since Thursday's opening bell.

Democrats, for their part, are calling on their congressional Republican counterparts to stand up to Trump and demand that he rescind his tariffs and put an end to the economic destruction.

"Trump’s idiotic economic policies are driving the world toward a global downturn. Instead of lifting a finger to stop it, House Republicans canceled votes after less than 24 hours of work this week & went home—refusing to stand up to Trump while American families pay the price," Democratic Rep. Jerry Nadler of New York wrote on X.

In a surprising move, four Senate Republicans joined Democrats in rebuking Trump’s tariffs on Canada Wednesday, but the House is not expected to move on that legislation, which Trump said he would veto anyway.

And on Thursday, Republican Sen. Chuck Grassley of Iowa joined Democratic Sen. Maria Cantwell of Washington in introducing a bill that would require the president to notify Congress of tariffs, allowing Congress 60 days to approve or deny them.

“For too long, Congress has delegated its clear authority to regulate interstate and foreign commerce to the executive branch. Building on my previous efforts as Finance Committee Chairman, I’m joining Senator Cantwell to introduce the bipartisan Trade Review Act of 2025 to reassert Congress’ constitutional role and ensure Congress has a voice in trade policy,” their news release said.

But even if this passes in the Senate, it’s difficult to see it passing in the House or avoiding a veto from Trump, who has shown no signs of lifting his tariffs.

“I don't think there's any chance Trump is gonna back off his tariffs,” Lutnick said on CNN. “This is the reordering of global trade.”

Reprinted with permission from Daily Kos.

Elon Musk

'Elon Emails' Pulled Operators Away From Social Security Hotline

Over the weekend, South African centibillionaire Elon Musk gave federal workers an ultimatum: Respond to an email asking what they accomplished at work this week, or risk losing their jobs. This has reportedly caused an interruption in services for at least one critical federal agency.

Talking Points Memo reported Monday that the 1-800 number for the Social Security Administration (SSA) was interrupted, as workers were expressly told they had to "write their Elon emails" even if they answered calls to the hotline. TPM founder Josh Marshall reported that Jill Hornick — a union representative for the American Federation of Government Workers (AFGE) Local 1395 chapter — confirmed that agency higher-ups expected hotline workers to take time way from their duties to respond to Musk's email.

Hornick specified to Marshall that hotline workers' schedules were being managed to ensure that desks would be manned throughout the day on Monday even as some workers stepped away from the phones to write their weekly work summaries. However, he noted that workers were somewhat caught off-guard by the response deadline, and that most calls to the hotline are from elderly people on fixed incomes having difficulty accessing the money they depend on to live.

"Needless to say, what’s created this crisis posture is the fact that all of this is being demanded on one day’s notice," Mrshall wrote. "According to the email, all the replies must be submitted no later than 11:59 PM tonight."

Musk's "Department of Government Efficiency," or DOGE (which is not yet an official federal agency authorized by Congress) sent the email on Saturday to the roughly two million federal workers over the weekend through the Office of Personnel Management (OPM), which effectively functions as the federal government's human resources department. TPM reporter Josh Kovensky posted to Bluesky that one unnamed "hill source" said that at least one federal judge also got the OPM email.

Some agencies have taken a different approach to the Musk email, with workers elsewhere being told they didn't have to respond to Musk's demands. And federal workers' unions have made it clear that they will have workers' backs if DOGE attempts to remove them for not complying with the ultimatum.

In an all-caps post to his Truth Social platform on Saturday, President Donald Trump made it clear he not only approves of what Musk is doing, but that he should "GET MORE AGGRESSIVE." He added that "WE HAVE A COUNTRY TO SAVE," though he didn't specify what he was attempted to save the country from.

Reprinted with permission from Alternet.

On Wisconsin Jobs, Biden Won And Trump Lost -- So Fox Whines About 'Trolling'

On Wisconsin Jobs, Biden Won And Trump Lost -- So Fox Whines About 'Trolling'

President Joe Biden traveled to Wisconsin on Wednesday to announce a new multibillion-dollar project by Microsoft, which stands in contrast to a notorious failure of local economic development in the state during the Trump administration. In response, Fox News’ purported “straight news” coverage accused Biden of “trying to troll” the public and otherwise dismissed the new project.

Biden traveled to Racine County to tout Microsoft’s $3.3 billion investment in a data center, which builds on other university partnerships and business projects the company has in the state. Notably, the data center will be constructed on land that was previously allocated for a factory to be built by Taiwanese electronics manufacturer Foxconn, in a deal pushed in 2017 by then-President Donald Trump and then-Gov. Scott Walker (R).

“Foxconn turned out to be just that,” Biden said Wednesday. “A con.”

The Vergereported in 2020 on the colossal failure of the Foxconn project. Though state and local governments spent at least $400 million on land and infrastructure, the factory never went into operation. And, far short of the 13,000 jobs that were promised, the company had hired fewer than 300 people by the end of 2019 and made a failed attempt to fill out its payrolls enough to qualify for state tax subsidies.

On the May 8 edition of MSNBC’s All In, host Chris Hayes said the Foxconn deal — along with many other Trump promises about saving jobs, reviving American manufacturing, or building important infrastructure — was “a big, glitzy announcement that turns into nothing.”

Hayes also revisited Trump’s remarks at a 2018 groundbreaking event in Racine County, in which he claimed the factory would be “the eighth wonder of the world.”

In Fox News’ telling, however, it was Biden’s event, rather than Trump’s failed promises on the Foxconn deal, that was politically suspect, and a cover-up for a supposedly failing economy to boot. (The American economy is objectively strong, despite the right-wing smear campaign to convince the public otherwise.)

  • Fox News anchor Harris Faulkner said people in Racine should ask the president why his economic policy “doesn’t … work for us, the American people.” “If anybody would like to raise their hand there — you don’t need to be a reporter, just be a citizen who is curious,” Faulkner said. “Mr. President, why doesn’t your economic policy work for us, the American people? Why is it not working for millions of people? And do you know when you wipe away the tax breaks you’re gonna hurt middle-class Americans too?” [Fox News, Outnumbered, 5/8/24]
  • Fox News White House correspondent Jacqui Heinrich claimed that Biden “turned to a new strategy of trying to troll voters” by touting the new data center at the site of the failed Foxconn project: “Is that what he’s left with, to just troll Trump?” Fox News anchor John Roberts added that the Microsoft AI center is “scheduled to be built — we’ll see if they actually break ground on it. We’ll find out soon.” Roberts then dismissed Biden’s remarks on job creation, saying, “Take off the rose-colored aviators” and changing the subject to attack Biden on the issue of inflation. [Fox News, America Reports, 5/8/24]
  • Fox Business host and former Trump administration economic adviser Larry Kudlow accused Biden of “trying to buy votes” while defending Trump’s failure on the Foxconn project. “And I might add, the Trump years, the money was allocated to Foxconn, but the foreign investor pulled out so it never got done,” Kudlow said. “So, such is life, nothing you can do about that.” (Right-wing commentators often accuse Democrats of “buying votes” through various government programs, even as people like Kudlow defend economic interventions by Republican administrations regardless of whether they succeeded or failed.) [Fox Business, The Big Money Show, 5/8/24; Media Matters, 9/29/15, 4/9/24]
  • Reprinted with permission from Media Matters.

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