Hard Times for Nonprod Workers in Manufacturing

When you move manufacturing out of the country, supporting positions and industries follow too. I live in an area where a semiconductor manufacturer just ended production. Not only were thousands of production workers let go, plus related management and other staff; but local companies that serviced and supplied materials are also firing people. Inevitably, all the infrastructure and R & D will move to Asia where the production fabs are.

This is anecdotal, but I have noticed companies becoming hostile toward their sales and marketing people.

Accountants rule the roost now. They never understood nor liked S&M. Maybe they think with the internet the products will sell themselves.

It seems odd and self defeating. No wonder revenues are not growing. Everyone wants to cut their way to success.

Well, the graph suggests a previous ~10% point gap between the rate of job cuts. Maybe production jobs have already been cut to the point where operations can barely be sustained, and the office staff still has some meat (or fat, as some would have it) left. Possibly the link between output and labor is more easily observed with production staff, i.e. it may be more transparent who is doing what.

I'm under the impression in the office environment where I work, many managers are unable (or unwilling) to figure out what a reasonable workload is, or what their underlings are actually doing the whole day, so they resort to "let's push some more work their way and see how hard we can drive them". Maybe that can be applied the other way around too - let a few of them go and see whether things still work. If not, we can always backfill, there are enough willing candidates out there, right?

Economics is very good at telling us what happened. Is there any branch of economics that is looking through the windshield toward stimulating economic growth, rather than through the rear view mirror?

Is there a clearing house for fresh, new economic ideas and innovation? We are looking for one.

Charles Phillips:

Austrian Economics.

I agree, very hard time for service sector workers.