Wall Street or Silicon Valley don't need to be the sole entry point to an intellectually fulfilling and financially attractive career. That can be as attractive to college graduates as blue collar workers. A manufacturing job today does not mean repetitive physical labor in a sweaty factory it can involve a convergence of skills that rely on the use of the technologies of the fourth industrial revolution, including machine learning, Big Data, the internet of things and virtual reality. We need to give the manufacturing and industrial industries a facelift. It is similarly unrealistic to want to turn the clock back to traditional (and often outdated) manufacturing jobs in industries whose best days are behind them. It is unrealistic to expect those workers to retrain as coders or game testers. In order to save the American economy, we cannot continue to weaken the USD by consistently importing expensive goods when those goods could easily be created at home. Relying on imports also harms our economy. Supply chains for microchips are going through a similar crisis now, due to our dependence on China. In 2020, America faced a serious PPE shortage due to supply chain disruptions from abroad. If we restart American manufacturing it won't just benefit those communities, or our entire political culture-it will make us stronger as a country. The vast majority of Americans surveyed by Edelman believe that America is in the throes of a 'cold civil war,' with the young educated flocking to high-paying metropolises and traditional blue collar workers staying behind.Ī view of Johnstown, Pennsylvania. Every one of those jobs could be the difference between a family enjoying a dignified middle class existence or ending up on the streets. The number of manufacturing jobs declined by a third between 20. President Joe Biden's talk of healing will fall on deaf ears if we don't invest in bringing those jobs back-in a future-proof, 21st century form. Fixed political affiliations are a luxury many cannot afford when their livelihoods are on the line.Īs long as America's manufacturing jobs are declining, along with the communities dependent on them, the anger that fueled that vote will not go away. Trumbull was one of the 217 Barack Obama counties that flipped for Donald Trump, the first time the county had 'gone red' since Richard Nixon's landslide against George McGovern in 1972. Unsurprisingly, this has a political fallout. Unfortunately, the only things booming there were addiction treatment and home demolition businesses. The opioid crisis has been raging in Trumbull County at three times the national average. Those left behind often have nothing but unemployment and addiction. Census Bureau announced that the county's population had dipped below the 200,000 mark for the first time since 1950. The month after GM went dormant, the U.S. Ohio's Trumbull County is a case in point, and a microcosm of post-industrial America. This brain drain destroys communities because when the young and educated abandon a town, they take economic growth with them. They are disproportionately college-educated Americans looking for high-paying work in places like Seattle, New York or California. This must be reversed.Īlmost a third of adults in the United States have moved in the last five years. This creates demographic changes which can lead to a painfully divided country.

Coastal, Sun-Belt regions are receiving a greater share of educated, ambitious Americans, with the Rust Belt being left behind. The urgency of this is not felt everywhere. America will not heal-politically or economically-until it invests in a high-tech 21st manufacturing industry that can create the jobs and growth we need. It is a decline that has led to inequality, social division and political polarization, most acutely felt since 2016. is still reeling from the wounds caused by the decline of its industrial and manufacturing base.

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