Regarding manufacturing jobs I really loved this freakonomics podcast[1]
> Interviewer: Ah, the lovely language of economics once again. “Costlessly reallocate to their next best opportunity,” meaning that some American who loses his manufacturing job just hops over to the next good job, which just happens to be available, near where he’s already living, and for which he just happens to be perfectly qualified for…
> Economist: That’s not what we see. We see those falls in manufacturing employment correspond to about equally large falls in overall employment rates over the first 10 years in those trade-impacted locations. So every half a point that manufacturing falls, we see a total decline of about a half a point. So some people are leaving the labor market, some people are going into unemployment. Some people are going on to disability. And so the reallocation process seems to be slow, frictional, and scarring.
Well if your looser your job will your wife and kids follow you to the next one? Mine probably won’t so what do I do? Live alone and send money home or do I hop Between low wage jobs?
It gets bad. In Janesville, Wisconsin when the GM plant closed:
>The fabric of hundreds of families unravels, as an itinerant class of fathers — “Janesville Gypsies,” they call themselves — start commuting to G.M. factories in Texas, Indiana and Kansas, just so they can maintain their wage of $28 an hour. Those who stay home invariably see their paychecks shrink drastically. One of the men Goldstein follows, Jerad Whiteaker, cycles through a series of unsatisfying, low-paying jobs, finally settling in one that pays less than half his former wage and offers no health insurance. His twin teenage girls — to whom I’d also like to send awed notes — share five jobs between them, earning so much money for their family that they compromise their eligibility for student loans.
> Interviewer: Ah, the lovely language of economics once again. “Costlessly reallocate to their next best opportunity,” meaning that some American who loses his manufacturing job just hops over to the next good job, which just happens to be available, near where he’s already living, and for which he just happens to be perfectly qualified for…
> Economist: That’s not what we see. We see those falls in manufacturing employment correspond to about equally large falls in overall employment rates over the first 10 years in those trade-impacted locations. So every half a point that manufacturing falls, we see a total decline of about a half a point. So some people are leaving the labor market, some people are going into unemployment. Some people are going on to disability. And so the reallocation process seems to be slow, frictional, and scarring.
[1]https://freakonomics.com/podcast/did-china-eat-americas-jobs...