The manufacturing sector lost 4,000 jobs in November, according to the latest employment data from the Labor Department. It's the fifth month in a row that manufacturing has lost jobs.
Said Alliance for American Manufacturing (AAM) President Scott Paul:
"President-elect Donald J. Trump will inherit a healthy private sector economy, with the notable exception of manufacturing employment. Factory jobs have been stagnant for two years.
"Automation is displacing some of these manufacturing workers, but many more opportunities have been lost due to weak export growth and high levels of imports, particularly from China. Congress and the incoming president should enact policies to boost domestic demand, such as infrastructure investment, that would increase factory hiring.
"Congress and the president-elect must also prioritize trade policy reform, with a focus on China’s industrial overcapacity and unfair trade practices. While, on balance, I believe this week’s Carrier deal was worth doing, it isn’t a practical job creation policy moving forward.
"That said, I hope the deal impacts corporate decision-making on offshoring and reshoring, as our global competitors are fighting every day to attract jobs, sometimes through unsavory means."
The #AAMeter, which tracks President Obama's goal to create 1 million new manufacturing jobs, now sits at +300,000 jobs. That means there would need to be 350,000 new manufacturing jobs created each month in the final two months of the Obama administration for the president to hit his goal.