Want some good Obama news?

[TomClash]

About 250,000 new manufacturing jobs have been created in the 2 1/2 years since he took office. That's nearly as much as Clinton achieved in 8 years. During Nero Bush's reign, about 4.5 million manufacturing jobs were eliminated.

Those manufacturing jobs were created right after the worst financial scandal and economic collapse this country has seen since the Depression and while running a huge deficit created by Nero Bush.

It's nowhere near enough but it's a start. And it's better than the bastards on the other side will ever do.

[Uben]

1. How many manufacturing jobs were lost the past two years?

Is the 250K jobs a net figure, or just the "added" ones?

[TomClash]

4. It's a net figure nt

[librechik]

32. YAY!

[Le Taz Hot]

2. In which country?

:shrug:

[madokie]

3. These new Manufacturing jobs generally will last too

Now that the rich have moved all they can off shore that is.
If the few rich people would get out of the way and let the system work as its designed to we'd have a net surplus of jobs in a very short time. Right now the rich don't want Obama to succeed and so they're doing all they can to make sure he doesn't. I just wish the rich would move out of the country and leave us regular folks to our own, we'd all be better for it.

For the most part most people are Americans first. I truly believe that.

[MannyGoldstein]

5. The three new "free" trade agreements that Obama's about to sign

should take care of those pesky positive numbers.

[Shanti Mama]

6. Source? I'd like to pass this on.

[TomClash]

15. links

http://www.npr.org/2011/06/24/137383302/obama-we-need-more-manufacturing-jobs

http://www.netrootsmass.net/2008/09/298-bush-job-creation-not/

(I did not check the netrootsmass numbers, which apparently come from BLS)

[GeorgeGist]

17. Curious:

1. The NPR story never mentions Clinton nor Bush.
2. The netrootsmass article never mentions Obama.

But when you merge the two together you get bullshit OPs on the Greatest Page.

[TomClash]

21. Why would that make it a "bullshit op"?

Does every bit of news have to come from the same source?

Or did you just want to flame for no reason?

[no limit]

29. This story seems to say 323,000 were created under Clinton

[TomClash]

31. Yes, that's right - over 8 years nt

[Bluenorthwest]

7. Stats need links...

Are those jobs in the US? Is this a net gain?

[NYC_SKP]

9. Link: (Toledo Blade) 250,000 Manufacturing Jobs This Year. The OP is wrong.

According to this article, it's one year, not 2-1/2 years.

I used the Google to try to find more info and this came up:

http://www.toledoblade.com/Economy/2011/06/23/Manufacturers-add-jobs-poll-says.html

:patriot:

[Dappleganger]

11. Are these permanent jobs or contracting/temporary manufacturing jobs.

My husband is in the industry and while there has been some very slow hiring (not new positions, but replacing people) most of them are temporary with no benefits and they can be shed at a moment's notice. Dh said that nearly 20% of his plant is now temp workers and can be laid off completely TOMORROW with no repercussions whatsoever, no benefits to pay out. He's been in manufacturing for over 23 years and we've been through multiple layoffs and plant closings.

[NYC_SKP]

13. I confess that I don't have the numbers, just did a Google search and found that.

And now I have to go to work.

Hopefully, some good DUer can dig up more data.

:hi:

[TomClash]

16. I think that's right

Benefits and protections have been slashed. I was pointing out one silver lining in any otherwise big, dark cloud.

[Dappleganger]

18. If these are temp jobs w/out benefits, I'd hardly call that a "silver lining.'

With all due respect that is NOT a real manufacturing job in the same sense it used to be.

[JuniperLea]

26. All jobs help boost the economy...

Jobs will NOT be created until there is a demand for goods and services. Putting people back to work ups spending, no matter how you slice it. Temp jobs can become full time permanent positions easily... especially once demand picks up. It's a domino effect, and it all starts with demand no matter how many Pubbies tell you that businesses will hire just because they have move cash-flow (tax cuts).

[Dappleganger]

10. +10000

And any gain of jobs will look good as so many jobs were LOST.

[TomClash]

25. Yeah, no kidding

We don't manufacture enough products and we are living on borrowed time. Obama is doing something to try to improve manufacturing in this country. It's not enough, but it is better than nothing, which is basically what everyone else is doing.

[Brickbat]

8. Are these ones that fall under that weird "manufacturing" label that included burgers a few years

ago?

[Lone_Star_Dem]

12. I don't think so.

If what's being referred to is what I think it is, it's real manufacturing jobs. The stickler is the pay. Wages are considerably lower for many of these jobs than they were for the ones which were lost.

The nation’s factories have added 250,000 jobs since the beginning of last year — about 13 percent of what was lost during the recent recession — marking the first sustained increase in manufacturing employment since 1997.

But the new hiring also reflects another emerging reality of U.S. manufacturing: Many of the jobs don’t pay anything close to what they used to. Assembly-line workers who will be making the EdenPure products under the auspices of Suarez Corp. Industries will start at $7.50 an hour.

That’s a far cry from the $20 an hour that most workers made with Hoover, which shifted its century-old production lines to Mexico and El Paso in 2007 after concluding that it was too expensive to make its products in the industrial Midwest.

“The communities and workers in Ohio have been devastated over the past decade and are grateful for the opportunity to earn a living,” said Robert Baugh, executive director of the AFL-CIO’s Industrial Union Council. “But this is tempered by reality. One is that the jobs at Suarez, with wages and benefits well below the middle-class ones that were there before, are not a replacement for the ones that left.”

http://www.thefiscaltimes.com/Articles/2011/05/18/WP-Rust-Belt-Shows-Luster-on-Job-Front.aspx

[Brickbat]

14. Yep, that was going to be my next point.

At 7.50 an hour, it may as well be a burger job!

[Dappleganger]

19. At $7.50 an hour with little to no benefits, this is like cheering the opening of a new McD's

down the street.

You cannot LIVE on that kind of money. Better than nothing?? You know welfare benefits probably give more.

[Lone_Star_Dem]

34. To be fair, the $7.50 per hour was only at the Suarez Corp plant.

If you click on the link to the mother article in the WaPo you read:

Ben Suarez, founder and chief executive of Suarez Corp. Industries, the maker of EdenPure and other home products, said that “everybody wants to manufacture in the United States. It is just the cost of doing it” that prompts companies to move factories offshore.

He decided to move manufacturing back from China because it takes two months to get products to market from his factories there. That lag led to supply and inventory headaches for his weather-sensitive products, particularly his signature space heaters. Those problems became less tolerable as his costs for making products in China and shipping them home began to soar.

Once he began making some of the heaters in a temporary facility in North Canton last year, he noticed that they sold 30 percent better than identical ones made in China, simply because of labels identifying them as made in America, he said.

The clincher was when his company was able to re-engineer the space heater so it required fewer man-hours to build. Even with all of that, Suarez said, his production costs are higher here than they would be in China. Nonetheless, he said he is happy to be bringing jobs back to his home town, adding that he will probably hire as many as 2,500 workers over the next 18 months.

It also points out that new hires in the auto factories are starting out at right at half what the veteran workers there make.

Meanwhile, newly hired autoworkers are earning $14 an hour plus benefits, about half of a veteran autoworker’s wage. And many experts and labor leaders worry that the wage premium that factory workers enjoy is eroding.

Link to full article: http://www.washingtonpost.com/business/economy/in-rust-belt-manufacturers-add-jobs-but-factory-pay-isnt-what-it-used-to-be/2011/05/17/AFDmL55G_story_1.html

[progressoid]

23. $7.50 an hour?

Yeah, that'll bring back the middle class.

[Lone_Star_Dem]

35. A horrible wage to be sure, but it was only at the Suarez Corp plant.

If you read the entire article you see that that horrible wage of $7.50 - $8.50 per hour was only sited as being at one plant (Suarez Corp) which had recently moved it's manufacturing back from China. It in no way claimed that was the wage for all the new manufacturing jobs. Actually, it says the opposite further down in the article.

The link to the full article is in my post above: http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=show_mesg&forum=439&topic_id=1370454&mesg_id=1372715

[Lone_Star_Dem]

33. wrong spot

[ProSense]

20. Krugman: Making Things in America

Krugman: Making Things in America

In 2010, manufacturing grew from the first time since 1997

US Manufacturing: Normally Lagging, now Leading (February)

[classof56]

22. Well, Tom, you tried. I agree this is some good news.

Seems like my opinion's the minority here, but as you point out, following the disaster that was the Bush economy, I'm thinking this is a positive for Obama. Can only imagine where we'd be if Palin/McCain had won, but that's beside the point, I guess.

Tired Old Cynic

[TomClash]

24. I'm in the minority here too

But then again on DU it seems no matter what Ii write - I'm in the minority! :hi:

[JuniperLea]

27. Same old story...

Kick the good because it's not perfect.

I think the problem is most of us have never been through a Great Depression, nor have we benefited from hearing parents or grandparents tell the tales. Plus, we are barraged by BS all the time.

No businessperson worth their salt is going to increase employee head-counts or production if there is no demand for goods or services. That's why tax cuts to the wealthy have never worked. It's just flat bad business.

[Shagbark Hickory]

28. Good news, but it's still not enough.

[Overseas]

30. K&R!