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[nimblebear]

Fifty-four percent of U.S. manufacturers with sales topping $1 billion are planning to or considering bringing back factory-lines from China, up from 37 percent in February, the Boston Consulting Group said Sept. 24, citing a survey of 200 executives. It projects that with Chinese wages and benefits rising 15 percent to 20 percent a year, the cost of operating in China will be the same as staying in the U.S. by 2015. Trellis Earth Products Inc. (TREL), a Portland, Oregon-based producer of bioplastics, said in July it is moving its manufacturing operations to New York state from China, investing $8.3 million and creating almost 200 positions. “What you see is more companies reshoring and bringing jobs back,” said Harold Sirkin, a Chicago-based senior partner at BCG. “Previous headwinds are turning into tailwinds.” (Source Bloomberg Article) Combined with what's happening on the energy front, what we may be witnessing is an entirely different economy in terms of manufacturing versus a 'service' balance. The manufacturing that returns will likely be one of very highly skilled positions (i.e. college degree), and only hundreds instead of thousands of jobs per facility. This diversity may be a lot healthier in the long run, and less susceptible to the vagaries of the labor market place, where outsourcing to other countries becomes less of an issue. In the short run, clearly our jobless and many more (millions) people who will become unemployed will need to be wholly retrained, or re-educated, and our current system of upper education is simply not up to the task without bankrupting our society. The risk is even greater now of a society that doesn't lift all boats, but creates a greater standard of living gap between the poorly educated, and the highly skilled. And there won't be many jobs for the in-between. In fact, there will likely be a whole slew of jobs paying near minimum wage, and a slow growing, but very hard to obtain population of jobs for the highly skilled. This will apply to both manufacturing and service sector jobs, and will likely lead to a fairly different classification called simply "high tech" versus "low tech" positions. High tech positions will require far more math and science skills than currently being taught in k-12, and low tech positions will be those that likely won't even require a high school equivalent education. The 'opportunity of a lifetime' here, is that for those seeking long term job stability, and a decent standard of living, the challenge is very straightforward : Learn everything you possibly can about math and science and focus on technology, and don't waste your time with business, liberal arts, or any education that doesn't have a hefty focus on the first two. Any 'factory jobs' you see now, where you are on a 'line' of some sort, with repetitive and mostly mindless work, are virtually guaranteed to be a thing of the past. Automotive is the most obvious of this, and that will be a sector that continues to get pummeled, where those firms that adapt and change the fastest (i.e. move mostly to robotics with primarily high skilled labor) will be the ones that survive. As an excellent example of the 'new economy', Tesla may be the model/shape of car manufacturers to come whereby, the new and prospering firms are not necessarily producing just electric vehicles, but they are a model for far smaller auto manufacturing firms with the ability to produce and design vehicles without having to resort to millions sold per year to be profitable. Tesla to me is much more about the innovation at the firm, and the technology, than the fact they are offering a sexy, high performance, costly, and all electric vehicle. All firms that can emulate a Tesla, that are in other industries and sectors, will probably have the best shot at long term prosperity.