‘Percentages Often Show A Better Comparison’

To The Editor:
After reading the article on manufacturing jobs, I decided to do some research. I believe percentages often show a better comparison than hard numbers. If we were to do this on a percentage basis, you will see we have lost about 50 percent of our manufacturing jobs in the last 50 years. In 1960, our population was roughly 180 million with 14.6 million manufacturing jobs, which equates to roughly 8.1 percent of the population. In 2010, our population was roughly 308 million with 12.7 million manufacturing jobs, which equates roughly to 4.25 percent, about a 50 decrease decrease by population percentage.
If we were to apply the 2010 percentage back to 1960, we would have had about 7.2 million people employed in manufacturing and vice verse if we were to apply 1960 percentage to today we would have approximately 25 million manufacturing jobs. I have not yet figured out increases in some of the foreign countries, particularly Japan and China.
We may be producing more of the sophisticated products today than we did 50 years ago, but are we the main producers of these products? Can you tell me if we were the main producers of these sophisticated products 50 years ago? Can you tell me percentage wise, where the increases in sophisticated products that we manufacture are, in the last 50 years?
AL BURSTON
Cape May