So when jobs disappear, so do potential husbands — and that social shift has particularly rocked areas where manufacturing work has dried up. In 1994, the nation opened seamless trade with China and Mexico, allowing companies to tap cheaper labor beyond the border. They dug into government data around birth, marriage, employment and trade from 1990 to 2007, looking for connections between factory shifts and family structure. “We saw that, in some areas, manufacturing is an economic foundation on which a lot of other social arrangements rest,” Autor said. In Porter County, Ind., where his post indicates he lives, manufacturing jobs have fallen 9 percent since 2001, from 10,826 to 9,868.

Source: Washington Post March 09, 2017 12:02 UTC