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“learned to do more with less.” Global supply chains, meanwhile, have grown both tighter and much more supple since the late 1990s—a result of improving IT and freer trade—making it easier to relocate routine work. And of course China, India, and other developing countries have fully emerged as economic powerhouses, capable of producing large volumes of high-value goods and services.
    Some parts of America’s transformation are now nearing completion. For decades, manufacturing has become continually less important to the economy as other business sectors have grown. But the popular narrative—rapid decline in the 1970s and ’80s, followed by slow erosion thereafter—isn’t quite right, at least as far as employment goes. In fact,the total number of people employed in industryremained quite stable from the late 1960s through about 2000, at about 17 million to 19 million. To be sure, manufacturing wasn’t providing many new opportunities for a growing population, but for decades, rising output essentially offset the impact of labor-saving technology and offshoring.
    But since 2000, U.S. manufacturing has shed about a third of its jobs, with the decline accelerating after 2007. Some of that decline surely reflects losses to China. Still, industry isn’t about to vanish from America, any more than agriculture did as the number of farm-workers plummeted during the twentieth century. As of 2010,the United States was the second-largest manufacturer in the world, and the number three agricultural nation. But agriculture, of course, is now so highly mechanized that only about 2 percent of American workers make a living as farmers. American manufacturing looks to be heading quickly down the same path.
    Meanwhile, another phase of the economy’s transformation—one more squarely involving the white-collar workforce—is really just beginning. “The thing about information technology,” Autor told me, “is that it’s extremely broadly applicable, it’s getting cheaper all the time, and we’re getting better and better at it.” Computer software can now do boilerplate legal work, for instance, and make a first pass at reading X-rays and other medical scans. Likewise, thanks to technology, it’s now easy to have those scans read and interpreted by professionals half a world away.
    In 2007, the economist and former vice chairman of the Federal ReserveAlan Blinder estimated that between 22 and 29 percent of all jobs in the United States would be potentially offshorable within the next couple of decades. Ultimately, this process may be more painful than the automation and offshoring of manufacturing, simply because it will leave more people exposed. And with the recession, it seems to have gained steam. The financial crisis of 2008 was global, butjob losses hit America especially hard. According to the IMF, one out of every four jobs lost worldwide was lost in the UnitedStates. And while unemployment remains high in America,it has come back down to (or below) pre-recession levels in countries like China and Brazil, which are growing quickly.
    T ECHNOLOGICAL ADVANCEMENT AND trade expansion offer large benefits to society, including better, cheaper goods and services. And over time, both trade and technology create new domestic jobs even as they destroy old ones. But major economic transformations like the one we’re in the midst of today—Blinder once described it as a “third industrial revolution”—are inevitably wrenching. And during downturns, the forces behind them can be particularly vicious. Forced to cut costs aggressively (or given an excuse to do so), companies have pulled forward the difficult workplace restructuring and offshoring decisions that they otherwise would have made over many years, as natural attrition and retirement allowed. As a result, especially intense competition for limited job openings has forced many of the workers they’ve disgorged all the way down the ladder, or out of the