Is the increase of Service Sector employment hurting America's future prosperity?

Hey, nothing wrong with teachers, nurses and construction workers but as America moves away from manufacturing jobs into a more service sector economy, do you worry about the vitality of the American Economy and the strength of the Dollar?

Economist Paul Craig Roberts and his take on America鈥檚 trade deficit and service sector employment.

http://www.vdare.com/roberts/070909_rip....

From a Paul Craig Robert鈥檚 article:

鈥淚n August jobs in goods-producing industries declined by 64,000. The US economy lost 4,000 jobs overall. The private sector created a mere 24,000 jobs, all of which could be attributed to the 24,100 new jobs for waitresses and bartenders, and the government sector lost 28,000 jobs.

In the 21st century the US economy has ceased to create jobs in export industries and in industries that compete with imports. US job growth has been confined to domestic services, principally to food services and drinking places (waitresses and bartenders), private education and health services (ambulatory health care and hospital orderlies), and construction (which now has tanked). The lack of job growth in higher-productivity, higher-paid occupations associated with the American middle and upper middle classes will eventually kill the US consumer market.鈥?/div>

Bryan S, your response must be veiled in sarcasm and I just don鈥檛 get it. How would increasing robotic production in manufacturing help the large mass of American workers? The displacement in good paying jobs would offset the affordability of the products. That is like saying outsourcing our IT jobs to India makes our information products cheaper. Sure but millions of jobs lost with IT wages makes our income purchasing power that much smaller.

Broadly speaking, the article you quote is correct. It is not to the advantage of the US economy in the long run for growth to be concentrated in low-productivity and low-pay service industries.

It depends on how other sections of the economy perform.

Service Sector includes the majority of IT classified jobs as well as the financial industry, so it depends.

A country doesn't need to produce all of its durable goods, or more for export to be stable. However, for a "service" based economy, monetary stability is a paramount need.

Also consider that a decline in manufacturing jobs doesn't absolutely mean a decline in manufacturing production. Robotics allows a company to produce far more products per-employee than traditional manufacturing methods. Unfortunately, unions are the biggest blocker in this development. Their short sighted goals of retaining jobs costs our economy in production capacity. If we could switch to robotic manufacturing, we could, theoretically, outproduce any other country, with maybe the exception of China. This would drive down prices and make our products more viable on the world market and drive down domestic prices so that we may enjoy a higher standard of living without increasing pay.

In essense, a switch to service based economy doesn't equate to economic demise, it just depends on what those services are, if we have monetary stability, and how the rest of the economy innovates and performs.

Is the increase of Service Sector employment hurting America's future prosperity?

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