| It is not sufficient. That article is talking about manufacturing being the most dominant share in terms of sector. I am not disagreeing with that whatsoever. People complain about that because there are less jobs in manufacturing then there has ever been before.(Processes get more efficient, do not need as many people. This is a fact and not necessarily a bad thing.) That marketwatch article is somewhat skewed because it only talks about the US domestically versus how it does relative to the world. How about you take a stab at looking through this. https://fas.org/sgp/crs/misc/R42135.pdf page 5 >Congressional Research Service: U.S. Manufacturing in
International Perspective >The United States’ share of global manufacturing activity declined from 28% in 2002, following the end of the 2001 U.S. recession, to 16.5% in 2011. Since then,the U.S. share has risen to 18.6%, the largest share since 2009. These estimates are based on the value of each country’s manufacturing in U.S. dollars; part of the decline in the U.S. share was due to a 23% decline in the value of the dollar between 2002 and 2011, and part of the rise since 2011 is attributable to a stronger dollar >The U.S. share of global manufacturing value added has declined over time, from 29% in the early 1980s to 18.6% in 2015 (see Figure 2). Similarly, Japan’s share of global manufacturing value added has contracted from a peak of 21.5% in 1995 to around 7% now, and Germany’s has fallen from 10.4% (in 1992, just after the incorporation of the former German Democratic Republic into the Federal Republic of Germany) to 5.9%. |
Surprising Fact No. 2: Manufacturing output is a near a record high.
The decline of the global share of output is true, but it is sort of inevitable that ~5% of the global population will not maintain a vast share of global output. I'm also not terribly interested in arguing about whether Our ability to produce material goods really is greater than at any time in history. was a valid response to the post I responded too.