Is Deindustrialization a Myth? Capital Mobility versus Absorptive Capacity in the U.S. Economy

The current debate concerning the necessity and propriety of establishing an industrial policy for the United States turns, to a significant extent, on the question of whether the nation is undergoing deindustrialization. Using data on aggregate trends in manufacturing employment, Robert Z. Lawrence and others at the Brookings Institution claim that despite widespread plant closings during the 1970s, most employment loss was cyclical in nature and not permanent. In this article, new evidence on individual industries and regions is explored to test again the deindustrialization thesis. The conclusion of the current study is that while aggregate manufacturing employment has remained constant over the past decade, substantial permanent job losses have occurred in key basic industries and in particular regions of the nation. These employment losses pose a serious problem because the economy generally fails to provide comparable jobs in other sectors that can absorb the workers who become displaced.