Manufacturing jobs: outsourcing vs tech — and why factories create the designers
lemire · x · 2026-09-24
Responding to a claim that US manufacturing job decline was driven by technology rather than outsourcing (contra Jensen's assertion), lemire pushes back on mainstream economics: without factories you lose — or never develop — design expertise. "Not many people left in Silicon Valley capable of working on silicon"; a robotics PhD in Quebec City won't get you designing robots without being where they're made. He points to the collapse of US industrial employment after trade with China opened: if technology were the driver, output should have kept rising as jobs fell — the data says otherwise.
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