The death of manufacturing in Australia is a myth that ignores reality — and isn't to blame for One Nation's rise
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EveryConnection
natemanos
This is actually a good strategy from the Liberals if true.
Firstly, regarding the claim that the unemployment rate is low, and so you don't need manufacturing back. If you add capacity for new, high-paying jobs to the economy, you increase competition for higher wages across other jobs and the willingness of workers to upskill to earn higher wages. To the attempt to claim this is sexist; it's actually the opposite, as manufacturing jobs today are much more gender-neutral, as are our trades, because we have tools, equipment and automation that make the most difficult and dangerous parts of these jobs obsolete for people to do. (also, fewer deaths are nice)
There is no such thing as a skills shortage. A skills shortage is a lack of people willing to work for the low wages offered. We use this as an excuse to keep wages suppressed, and low unemployment is also a symptom of this because you have no option but to work a job with less than full-time hours and less wage competition to afford everyday life. (but at least the unemployment rate is low)
But it's also completely right that this will have dramatic negative consequences for the economy; it also has the long-run potential to be good for the economy, and it's a reorientation of the economy away from the typical older-generation vs. younger-generation focus. Costs will increase as a result of this, aided by tarrifs or other trade-war dynamics to make Australian goods more in line, cost-wise, with Chinese imports. Wage increases and higher costs, because those jobs are going to Australians, which will help the younger generation at the expense of the older generation, as asset prices will also suffer, and retirement income from CPI losses will rise.
To think that bragging about us offshoring to China is a good thing for young Australians is hilarious. Sure, you get cheap stuff, with worse environmental conditions, under working conditions Australians would find reprehensible.
Things aren't just good or bad. There are trade-offs, and ignoring the negative ones that have resulted from the loss of manufacturing is disingenuous. I'm glad they're at least having the conversation, though. This is a good step in the right direction, more questioning old beliefs like free trade.
Disaster_deck_revive
I actually like manufacturing as a job. The only downside to it was it pays so poorly that it is impossible to exist.
Its also bullshit when people state the trade off will be high cost. Its simply not true, the cost is the same. We just arrnt hiding it anymore
erala
If you add capacity for new, high-paying jobs to the economy, you increase competition for higher wages across other jobs and the willingness of workers to upskill to earn higher wages.
Is that what manufacturing jobs are though? https://www.abs.gov.au/statistics/labour/earnings-and-working-conditions/average-weekly-earnings-australia/latest-release#industry
natemanos
As of recent ABS Labour Force data, manufacturing accounts for around 5.9% of employed people in Australia (roughly 868,000 people in their main job), with sub-sectors like bakery product manufacturing, meat processing, and furniture manufacturing among the larger employers.
Just because that's what it is right now doesn't mean it always has to. We've precisely offshored the higher-paying manufacturing jobs because labour and other costs are generally cheaper. But even if manufacturing is generally a lower-paying subsector compared to others, these jobs go to people with less formal skills or qualifications, and, proportionally, they're higher-paying for them.
erala
So they're lower paying jobs, that we can only gain through reductions in everyone's purchasing power. There will be certain sectors where this tradeoff makes sense. I don't see a strong argument that it will raise the real wages of other workers.
natemanos
Using imported products in a globalised world is cheaper, but the money spent overseas on a product not produced in Australia has different dynamics for its return to Australia. We have to run a deficit, and those surplus nations have to buy our debt or assets. Verses. An Australian earns that wage and spends it in the economy. That increases overall consumption in the economy, lifting all boats. Another person's spending is another person's income, and money is flowing bottom-up rather than top-down through government deficits, disproportionately into the top stocks.
But because wages have stagnated for so long, and asset prices have risen partially because that's where our trade surplus has gone through investment, that would cause asset prices to decline. Also, if wages increase, wage taxes will rise, allowing the government to lower taxes in other ways, such as through construction, housing permitting, and land use. But that's a double whammy of price reductions due to where money is flowing and government incentive structures, and no one politically wants to reduce housing prices.
A more localised economy will, in comparison, be more expensive. Still, the money multiple of where money is spent, then earned and spent again, is a whole other dynamic. It increases the real wages of other workers because prices rise, but also because there's more capacity for people to spend.
erala
We have to run a deficit
asset prices have risen partially because that's where our trade surplus has gone through investment
I agree with one of these assertions, I have a hard time figuring out how both can be true at once
But because wages have stagnated for so long
And I'm interested in what exactly you mean by this and what you think the key drivers were
natemanos
Yeah, that second quote is a mistake on my end; it's not "our" surplus, it's where surplus funds from other nations have flowed into our economy (through investments).
To the second question, trade dynamics isn't the only one; it's better to say, more generally, globalisation and trade. This also coincided with generally lower interest rates as growth shifted from production to debt/assets (which disproportionately benefits the largest asset holders), and post-2008, this ramped up even further (generally called financialisation). The perpetuation of skills-shortage claims keeps university student demand high, thereby increasing the supply of workers, lowering wages. Making retirement funds market-based (passively indexed) means investment doesn't go to good companies; it just goes to what's in the ASX200.
Wealth has increasingly come from asset gains rather than wages, which hurts both younger and poorer people who don't have rich parents to help them buy assets like a house. And every time, like over the last few years, wages start rising, we are so afraid of 1970s-style inflation, we do almost anything to try and suppress it, even though that would have been better for the younger and poorer cohorts, actually, to have bargaining power.
Max_J88
Bullshit.
When your wage stays exactly the same for years but everyone else's has doubled in the same period, your wage has actually shrunk.
And when people talk about manufacturing, I don't think anyone means food manufacturing.
artsrc [OP] 7 points · Apr 2026
Productivity in manufacturing and agriculture has increased a lot, much more than construction or services.
So it makes sense that the manufacturing and agriculture workforce declines as a share of the overall workforce.
Perhaps this relates to the decline in productivity improvements.
There is a process analogous to https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Amdahl%27s_law happening.