Mathis: Don't expect manufacturing jobs to return to U.S.

Let’s be clear about one thing: The good old days of American manufacturing are over. It is no longer possible to walk out the door of your high school, stroll down the street and easily get a good-paying factory job that would sustain you and your family until retirement. Shuttered mills and factories throughout the country’s big cities testify to that hard truth.

Whether you can claim the remaining jobs will depend on two things: Your level of education, and the government’s willingness to “level the playing field” against competitors in China and other countries.

The Atlantic magazine documented the need for education in a cover story earlier this year: The manufacturing jobs that remain in the United States require highly skilled workers — people who have math and computer-coding skills needed to run efficient machines with delicate operating parameters.

A high school education won’t cut it for such jobs — a community college degree will be needed for the rest. Obama is right, at least, that more investments are needed in this sector to prepare workers for the opportunities that remain. Government may not be able to create jobs, but it can create conditions for jobs to be created and retained.

That still leaves the question of a level playing field.

As Donald Barlett and James Steele show in their recent book, “The Betrayal of the American Dream,” the United States government has promoted free trade with countries — like India and China — that subsidize industries, giving them an unfair cost advantage over American-based manufacturers. “It’s clear that free trade, as practiced by the United States, is driving down the income of millions of working Americans,” the duo write.

There’s little stomach among Democrats or Republicans to challenge the “free trade” orthodoxy that allows the situation to fester, however.

Which means no, those good jobs probably aren’t coming back.

Joel Mathis is a writer in Philadelphia.