What is up with US manufacturing jobs? - BBH

Analysts at Brown Brothers Harriman explained that what is happening to manufacture workers happened to agriculture worker more than 100 years ago.  

Key Quotes:

"It is also happening to many service sector employees and, perhaps in the coming years, drivers of all kinds.  The farm jobs were not outsourced or exported.  Mechanization was the real culprit.  A widely cited academic paper concluded that due to trade policy the US lost nearly one million manufacturing jobs between 1999 and 2011.  This is less than one-fifth of the manufacturing jobs lost over that period.  Another factor that few consider is the changing definitions.  A custodial engineer who looks after an auto plant, for example, is in manufacturing.  However, if the function is outsourced to a maintenance company, the job is now in the service sector.  Lastly, we note that so countries, including China, who have been accused of "stealing" American manufacturing jobs, are also losing manufacturing jobs.    

A record 19 states raised the minimum wage at the start of the year (Oregon, Maryland, and Washington, D.C. will do so later).  The increases vary.  Consider New York.  In New York City, the minimum wage is now $11, but in the downstate suburbs, it is $10 and $9.70 elsewhere.  The biggest jump is Arizona.  The $1.95 an hour increase brings the state's minimum wage to $10.  Roughly one in eight workers will be impacted in Arizona.  Massachusetts' minimum wage went up $1 to $11, and roughly 290k workers are directly impacted.  The minimum wage in California went up 50 cents (to $10.50) and impacts 1.7 mln workers directly.     

The left-of-center Economic Policy Institute estimates that some 4.3 mln American workers will likely see a wage increase due to the minimum wage increases.  However, there are more than 152 mln employees in the US.  The hike in the minimum wage is unlikely to be detectable in the month's average earnings data.  A couple of years ago, the non-partisan Congressional Budget Office noted that a rise in the federal minimum wage to $10.10 (from $7.25 set in 2009 and currently prevails) would "cost" 500k jobs, but boost the pay of 16.5 mln workers whose pay is tied to the minimum wage."

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