this post was submitted on 11 May 2025
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Canada has more manufacturing jobs per capita than the US. (lemmy.ca)
submitted 2 days ago by Daryl@lemmy.ca to c/canada@lemmy.ca
38 comments fedilink hide all child comments
 

Is that even possible? If so, it is an eye opener for what is happening in the American economy and what is causing the MAGA movement.

Let's follow the evidence.

According to this article https://www.npr.org/2025/05/09/nx-s1-5375146/trump-tariffs-factory-jobs-nostalgia?

there are 12.7 million manufacturing jobs in America, down from an all-time high of 19.6 million in 1979.

According to this data base,

https://www.statista.com/statistics/437763/employment-level-in-canada-by-industry/

there are 1.8 million manufacturing jobs in Canada. Applying the standard 1-to-10 ratio (population ratio) that means scaled up proportionate to population Canada would have the equivalent of 18 million manufacturing jobs, just short of America's all time high of almost 50 years ago, let alone the current US job rate.

That caught me completely off guard. Puts a whole new perspective on what Trump is saying about the dire state of the US. Even compared to Canada, the US is in the pits.

Here is another data bomb. One quarter of those US manufacturing jobs are held by immigrants. Not sure WHAT to make of that one.

America does have a problem regarding manufacturing jobs. But tariffs certainly are NOT the solution. If Canada can out-perform the US per capita without the trade barriers of tariffs, exactly what does that say about the condition America is in?

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[–] justOnePersistentKbinPlease@fedia.io 12 points 2 days ago (2 children)

Not always true. BCs lumber mills were so far ahead of the US mills technologically that it was actually funny.

At least until Harper and Poilievre surrendered to the US lumber lobby.

[–] Sturgist@lemmy.ca 7 points 2 days ago (1 children)
[–] justOnePersistentKbinPlease@fedia.io 6 points 2 days ago (1 children)

Yeah that's why I used past tense.

I recall in the mid 2010s some US mill declared how great they were for having a computer analyze the loss and determine the best cuts for optimization.

I toured a mill in BC in the early 1990s that had that technology for more than 5 years.

[–] Sturgist@lemmy.ca 4 points 2 days ago

Yeah, wasn't trying to detract from your comment bud. Giving extra detail.

Considering lumber was basically Canada's largest legal export for a very long time, that doesn't surprise me at all.

[–] Daryl@lemmy.ca 1 points 2 days ago (1 children)

What has devastated the Canadian lumber industry are the forest fires and the Pine Bark Beetle.

[–] justOnePersistentKbinPlease@fedia.io 2 points 2 days ago (1 children)

Yeah, no.

Harper and Poilievre fucked over BC when they surrendered to Bush and allowed the raw export of logs to the US.

That, and that alone was the death knell for rural BC. I know this because the market for robotics dropped out in BC once that damned deal was signed. Before that it was a huge industry with a guaranteed great career and benefits. Harper, Pierre Poilievre and the CPC killed it.

[–] Daryl@lemmy.ca 1 points 1 day ago (1 children)

So you think that the loss of huge tracts of trees has nothing to do with the decline of lumbering in Canada? The facts and the evidence indicate differently. Politicaldogma, on the other hand, has no respect for facts or the truth.

https://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/british-columbia/british-columbia-forestry-future-pine-beetle-1.6712576

[–] justOnePersistentKbinPlease@fedia.io 1 points 1 day ago

We've denuded most of the province of trees before, intentionally. Not a good thing, but it happened.

The problem is that conservative governments(Brian Mulroney, Gordon Campbell and Harper+Poilievre) set it up to allow the export of Raw Logs to the US. Thanks to the latter three, they started it. Thanks to Mulroney, we can't ever reduce or control the amount of logs exported because of rules in NAFTA/USCMA.