05-22-2015, 06:48 AM
(05-21-2015, 09:38 PM)mpd618 Wrote:(05-21-2015, 05:06 PM)tomh009 Wrote: You are right ... factory jobs have disappeared (I worked at Schneider's, too, when I was young ...). Not only downtown, but in all of Kitchener, in Ontario, in Canada -- all of the western countries. Factories are now mostly in low-cost countries, and I doubt they will ever come back here, not in the same form.
Manufacturing is still a very large part of our local economy (roughly ~20% of employment), and my understanding is that it is not on a sharp downward trajectory. What's left is of course more niche and more advanced kinds of manufacturing.
Yes, around 20% of employment is manufacturing companies based on StatsCan data (the actual number of factory jobs will be less than that as manufacturers also have white-collar employees). More specialized than before, and still factory employment is on a gradual downward slope.
And compared to the 80s, which KWchick referred to, we have lost companies like Budd, Uniroyal, Kaufman, Arrow, Schneider's, BFGoodrich etc.