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In 1840 manufacturing and other manuallabor industries employed about 17 percentof the U.S. job force. These employees con-

sisted of a heterogeneous group encompass-ing artisans, ditchdiggers, sailors and otherswho worked with their hands. The Americanblue-collar class began to take shape in theearly 20th century, when management engi-neers wrested control of the manufacturingprocess from skilled laborers such as machin-ists to take advantage of the proliferatingnumber of new tools. Through time-and-mo-tion studies, they also prescribed the preciseway people should do their jobs.

This “scientific management” in part cre-ated assembly-line production, which greatlyincreased productivity by eliminating the old-er rhythms of work. But the technique helpedto generate millions of boring, closely super-vised jobs. Some of the tasks required specialclothing, including, in some cases, blue pro-tective gear, which gave the class its name.

By the 1930s, with the coming of the NewDeal and its pro-labor legislation, it mighthave seemed that workers would soon domi-

nate the country, for they were organized,motivated and numerous. But American labornever became politically dominant, unlike la-bor in several European countries [see By theNumbers, May 1999]. In 1943, the peak yearin terms of their numerical importance, blue-collar employees accounted for at least 40 per-cent of the job force.

The chart sums up the 20th-century his-tory of American workers in manufacturing,by far the most important employer of blue-collars. Their relative importance has declinedalmost without pause since 1943. The droptraces primarily to vastly increased produc-tivity: for example, the productivity of the av-erage manufacturing worker in 2003 was 5.1percent higher than in 2002. Competitionfrom developing countries, often cited as thereason for the decline in manufacturing, hasbeen a secondary factor [see By the Numbers,May 2002]. Real wages have generally stag-nated in recent decades. But wages in manu-facturing have trailed those in other blue-col-lar occupations such as construction and trans-portation, perhaps because manufacturing isless well protected against foreign competition.

Shifting perceptions among blue-collarsthemselves also drained their power. Sociol-ogist David Halle of the University of Cali-fornia at Los Angeles showed that blue-collarstended to think of themselves as working folksunited in opposition to plant management.But outside of the factory, they gravitated to-ward middle-class attitudes typical of white-collar employees, particularly if they werehomeowners. Modern company practices,such as profit-sharing, also probably made iteasier to lower working-class consciousness.

Manufacturing employment parallelstrends in agriculture, which employed 63 per-cent of the workforce in 1840 compared withabout 2 percent today. It would not be sur-prising if blue-collar jobs in manufacturing,now at about 8 percent, fell to the same 2 per-cent level before the 21st century ends.

Rodger Doyle can be reached atrdoyle2@adelphia.net

Blue-Collars in EclipsePRODUCTIVITY LED TO WORKING-CLASS DECLINE BY RODGER DOYLE

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Production workers in 2002, in thousands:

Manufacturing: 11,217

Construction: 5,196

Transportation/Warehousing:3,611

Utilities: 478

Mining: 436

SOURCE: Bureau of Labor Statistics

THE BULK OFBLUE-COLLARS

America’s Working Man: Work,Home, and Politics among

Blue-Collar Property Owners.David Halle. University of

Chicago Press, 1984.

A Social History of the LaboringClasses: From Colonial Times

to the Present. Jacqueline Jones.Blackwell Publishers, 1999.

American Workers, AmericanUnions: The Twentieth Century.

Third edition. Robert H. Zieger andGilbert J. Gall. Johns Hopkins

University Press, 2002.SOURCE: Calculated from data supplied by the Bureau of LaborStatistics. Numbers in the chart refer to 2002 statistics.

FURTHERREADING

167

–69Manufacturing employment as percent of total employment

Hourly pay of production workers

in manufacturing

1920 1940

200

150

100

50

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–50

–1001960 1980 2000

Year

Perc

ent C

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1929

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