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Comment by derriz | Hacker News Reader

When people extol the virtues of manufacturing, I’m always reminded of the poll where 80% of Americans say that the country would benefit from a bigger manufacturing base but only 25% are interested in actually working in manufacturing. This isn’t an American thing btw - I’ve had arguments with brits and others who argue passionately that the country has been destroyed by the relative decline in manufacturing but when I ask “so you’d prefer to work in a factory?” it provokes fairly confused responses like “no but other people would”….

https://fortune.com/2025/04/15/americans-want-factory-jobs-r...

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I don't see a contradiction.

Whether I intend to work a factory job or not I can still decide that unemployment in the U.S., especially unemployment of blue-collar workers, would be better served by local industry than allowing for homelessness or a dependency on welfare. Never mind that there might also be national security issues addressed by local manufacture.

The opposite, expecting everyone in the country to aspire to white-collar professions, is to me much more clearly an elitist (or at least irrational) position to have.

>The opposite, expecting everyone in the country to aspire to white-collar professions, is to me much more clearly an elitist (or at least irrational) position to have.

This, when you have everyone go to college and then they'll be shocked to be unemployed or work for peanuts since there's an oversupply of college grads and not much demand.

Here in Austria people working in construction cam earn way better than SW engineers because the former have an oversupply and the latter a shortage.

If you need a mobile app or a Java app, the're dime a dozen developers but if you need a plumber, lock smith, facade, roof specialist, well good luck.

The days when a college degree were an instant ticket to a well paid job for life are over.

It's not even an issue of job scarcity.

I have worked enough blue-collar jobs to know that there exist people for whom technical work is a non-starter. Not that they are somehow dim and incapable of learning engineering, but "work" that is not done through labor, that does not show in a tangible way a day's effort… is anathema to them.

>It's not even an issue of job scarcity.

Still it's supply and demand issue. The west has had 20-30 years of grooming the youth that going to college is the right path to middle class lifestyle and blue collar jobs are for losers who are too stupid to study. You can't be shocked when the supply demand reverses. South Park even had an episode mocking this, with plumbers being the new tech bros, and tech bros being unemployed.

> but "work" that is not done through labor, that does not show in a tangible way a day's effort… is anathema to them

Same applies within white collar jobs too. Some engineers want to work in hardware, firmware, mechanical jobs, because the output is tangible, instead of pushing JSONs to the cloud, even if that's not more complicated than the other.

"Some engineers want to work in hardware, firmware, mechanical jobs, because the output is tangible…"

Ha ha, the giddy feeling a software engineer feels when they write a few lines of assembly on a Motorola 68HC11 and get an LED to turn on…

Dalton has been the worldwide leader in carpet manufacturing since before I was born. Multiple generations of people have worked in those factories. They earn good money and can afford big houses and savings.

You should talk to the people of Dalton. They're really proud of it. The first thing they tell you is they're from the "carpet capital of the world". Without fail they will mention that to you. It's so ingrained that it's part of their identity.

I don't think they'd be happy to lose their jobs for knowledge work or anything else.

Yeah that's all well and good but eventually these people retire and figure out their bodies are too broken to enjoy retirement.

>“no but other people would”

I see no issue with that statement. Without blue collar work what are the job prospect for those who can't become an AI engineer or a quant in London other than live on the dole or become homeless crack addict?

> I’m always reminded of the poll where 80% of Americans say that the country would benefit from a bigger manufacturing base but only 25% are interested in actually working in manufacturing.

This is a silly statistic that manipulative people drag out to imply the answer that they want. If you asked people who work in factories right at this second, 75% of them would say that they didn't want to work in a factory. If you ask people who work any job, and ask if they would rather not be working, 75% would say yes.

It kind of goes with the weird idea that illegal immigrants actually love to clean toilets and work in fields for slave wages.

> when I ask “so you’d prefer to work in a factory?”

...to your upper-middle class friends who make six figures.

If you have more factory jobs the workforce has to come from either immigrants or the cushy white collar or service jobs that Americans mostly work today right? Because our unemployment rate isn’t low enough that we can just take people who aren’t working and get them working in factories.

Japan has had to heavily import workers to keep its factories and service jobs staffed, and the Japanese hate immigration more than MAGA does. The other solution is automation, which is how China plans to deal with its demographic cliff, I guess we could import factory robots from China.

You know nothing of my friends.

Have you ever worked in a factory? I find the people most enthusiastic about manufacturing are the ones least likely to have stood at a station in a factory performing manufacturing "work" - the vast majority of which is mind-numbingly boring and repetitive yet with minimal opportunities for passing the time with idle social interaction or chit-chat. Of all the non-professional work I've done, it was easily the least enjoyable. Even if it paid a bit less and demanded more physically, unskilled construction work was enjoyable in comparison. Even kitchen portering provided more stimulation - at least there was plenty of social interaction. This romanticization of factory work is weird.

I find it funny how you are describing it and acting like it is bad. In most of the topics dealing with WFH and return to office, a large number of the comment were along this vain:

"I really hate going into the office because I don't want to have to socialize with my coworkers, I just want to be able to do my work and be done with my day."

What acting have I been doing? Feels like a weasely way of accusing me of lying when I said I hated my experience of factory work. If you have had a different experience of factory work, let’s hear it. And preferably without the presumption - particularly the weird idea that being antisocial or asocial is the norm for human existence.

America is pretty good at creating an underclass they can force into less desirable jobs using the prison industrial complex.

The word for that is "slavery".

The Civil war never banned slavery. It only banned private citizens from owning people. The government (state and federal) kept sole right to still own people.

The only gate is found guilty of a crime. Technically, that can even be for a speeding ticket. And when they can keep prosecuting for a laundry list, they effectively guarantee a win against whomever they want.

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