A paper titled The Surprisingly Swift Decline of U.S. Manufacturing Employment by Justin Pierce suggests that the sharp decline in US manufacturing jobs as a result of imports from China. Regardless of the cause, it is a fact that US manufacturing has declined over the past several years. Along with the decline in jobs, there has been a decline in the technical skills needed for performing manufacturing jobs. The loss of technical skills is largely due to the fact that as manufacturing jobs declined, job training refocused to other areas such as service sector jobs.

This all happened at a time when the baby boomers who were the backbone of American manufacturing began leaving the workplace in droves due to retirement. The age of the baby boomers is rapidly coming to an end; and due to the decline in manufacturing, there’s been no concerted effort to replace them.

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