What's got people excited about the future of the economy?

[Chuckanut]

Our economy is a feedback loop.

Investors build factories, etc. (increasing supply) in the hopes of making more money
Consumers (that's mostly the middle class) buy the goods and services driving the demand for what the investors are making.

Both need to be economically healthy for the loop to work properly.

An investor is not going to build a new factory or whatever increasing supply if he/she thinks that people can't or won't buy what is produced.

Consumers (again the middle class) are not going to buy goods and services the investor produces, driving demand, if they don't have the financial resources/security to do so.

It's a feedback loop.

[capjak]

Quote:

Originally Posted by LOL! Today's jobs report shows that fewer jobs were created in 2017 than in 2016.

December jobs report: U.S. economy added 2 million jobs in 2017 - Jan. 5, 2018

"The United States added almost 3 million jobs in 2014, 2.7 million in 2015 and 2.2 million in 2016. That trend is what's expected in such a long economic expansion. As unemployment moves to historic lows, job gains eventually slow down."

Amazing that 2 million more people went to work in 2017 with such low unemployment. According to the article small business can not fill their open positions and the Manufacturing hires went up 200,000 vs a decline in 2016.

We are going to see wages go up resulting in price increases, I believe.

"In Phoenix, where the unemployment rate is a few notches below the national average, wages grew more than 5% in December, the best of any U.S. metro area, according to a separate report by Paychex, a payment processor, and IHS Markit, an analytics firm."

[CaliforniaMan]

Quote:

Originally Posted by Running_Man In the last 4 years manufacturing jobs have increased over 9 percent by more than one million jobs even as the economy has grown at a slower rate. Construction Jobs in the last four years has risen by over 25% to 6 million workers. It is true that since 2000 the US has lost about 5 million jobs, even after gaining 1 million back recently. However China has gained, thanks in large part to extremely low shipping costs of goods, 16 million manufacturing jobs to 100 million manufacturing jobs up to nearly $3.60 in wages hourly and Mexico has gained 1 million manufacturing jobs, from 4 million to a little over 5 million at $2.48 cents per hour. I think finance and cost has a lot more to do with manufacturing jobs than the takeover by robots, by robots sell more video commericials for websites

I guess I should have been more specific, I was not referring to the ebb and flow of jobs during business cycles, but rather to the long trend over what will probably be many cycles. We did not change from a primarily farming economy to a primarily manufacturing one over one or two business cycles, and we will not be moving out of being a primarily manufacturing economy over one or two business cycles either. But the trend is unstoppable. Technological change is simply moving too fast and accelerating. There will be a smaller and smaller percentage of the population engaged in direct manufacturing in the future, worldwide. We should not allow the ups and downs of the business cycle to obscure that trend, and what we should do about it. My point, I think was, that while we focus on the current cycle, we are not looking at what we want to do for the future of this much larger and more profound change. Thus my remark about a future of stormy weather. Along the way there will be those trying to sell us umbrellas, storm drains, and tin foil hats, but just as those engaged in those first manufacturing jobs had miserable lives, those that live in a post manufacturing world just might too. I don't think it has to be that way, but who knows. Certainly not me.

[Bamaman]

N.Y. cousin's son graduated with a degree from the University of Houston with a major in Computer Engineering.

He has no desire to write code. He went straight to working with industrial robots, and has had a bunch of job offers. For recreation, he is into drones and the incredible things they can do with packs of the running in unison.

Our area is very robot dependent whether it is robot welding on power plants, robots welding automobile components, robot spray painting. And who knows what do it's are doing on our area's biggest industry--heavy lift rockets.

And to the north of us, Amazon has a bunch of warehouses with robots carrying shelving units to check out and stocking stations.

Yep, robots are much of the future of manufacturing and warehousing, and it would be a great field to get into.