Tariffs Unlikely to Bring Back Many U.S. Blue-Collar Jobs, Study Finds

Protectionist trade measures may boost U.S. manufacturing output, but those factories now rely on robots and fewer, better-educated workers

By Eric Morath of The WSJ.

"Trade barriers aimed at protecting U.S. factories could boost manufacturing output, but are unlikely to bring back many blue-collar jobs.

The U.S. shed about 5.5 million manufacturing jobs between 2000 and 2017–more than twice as many as lost between 1980 and 2000–and those job losses were more highly concentrated among lower-skilled positions often filled by men with less education, a new study from University of Chicago researchers found.

During the same 17 years, output from U.S. factories increased. That’s because manufacturing firms, some facing pressure from China and other lower-cost, overseas competition, have automated low-skill, routine tasks and became more reliant on robots and college-educated workers to boost production.

Now that the shift has occurred, it is difficult to undo.

“Putting up barriers to trade now, isn’t going to take the machines away,” said Erik Hurst, and economist at the University of Chicago and one of the study’s authors.

“Policies that promote the domestic manufacturing sector over foreign competitors might help output, but they won’t help manufacturing workers, especially less-educated, lower-skilled workers,” he said.
The sharp decline in manufacturing jobs since the turn of the century helps explain why working-age Americans, especially men between 21- and 55-years old, are employed at lower rates. The University of Chicago study found that a 10-percentage point decline in the share of manufacturing jobs in a local area resulted in a 3.7 percentage point decline in share of those prime-age men who were employed. The decline for similar women was 2.7 points.

It has been the less-educated men that faced the brunt of the contraction. In the late 1970s, nearly 30% of employed men with less than a high-school diploma worked in manufacturing. By last year, it was less than 15%.

“The manufacturing sector is no longer the disproportionately important source of employment for the less-educated that it was in the late 1970s and early 1980s,” the study said. At the same time, the share of manufacturing workers who are college educated has grown sharply.

The share of men age 25 to 29 working in manufacturing with a bachelor’s degree rose 5.5 percentage points in the past two decades to 26.6%. That was a larger increase and a higher rate of college education than found in the retail or construction industries, and a faster rate of growth than for the workforce overall, the researchers found."