This is completely accurate, the increase in reliable productivity due to automation means we are making more, but the fact is we could be making everything that we make and China makes and still not exhaust our available workforce. However, shareholders like to hear about profit per share, not about reinvestment and growth, the demand money NOW, not in 24-48 months. Privately owned companies could weather a large increase in capital expenditure by taking the long view, publically owned companies seem incapable of doing so. The end result of this is cutting costs while slowly introducing more automation, rather than focusing on increasing productivity while maintaining the workforce to grow. The problem is that people are ignorant, they would rather have cheap less reliable goods than goods that are made to a higher standard, Most people would rather pay 2k for a car that lasts them a year, than 10k for a car that lasts 7. This is interestingly paralleled in the way our politicians run the government heh.

Letting China keep MFN (Most Favored Nation, granted to keep them less in the Soviet camp and now needing to be removed) status, and not using the power of tariffs properly has allowed foreign competition to dramatically undercut costs. If GM/GE/Admiral etc could produce goods cheaper here they would not have spent the last 30 years moving their lines overseas.

We have reached (and some say passed) a tipping point where our ability to purchase goods is hampered by the lack of jobs. SE Michigan is a good example of this problem. We can hope that as standards of living improve in the third world they will in turn want higher end consumer items, but I fear that their local manufacturers will be able to undercut us. Especially since most governments use protective tariffs to encourage their own industry.

Additionally, if off-shoring was the issue, than manufacturing in the USA should be going down. Yet we make more in the USA now than at any other time in our history. So why the fewer jobs?

I firmly believe this is because of robots. A single position across every factory in America was eliminated by 75% by a single robot. Multiply this by other positions that robots have no doubt eliminated and the real problem of continually underemployed, unskilled labor is put into perspective.

Honestly though, off shoring is a more serious issue than robotics at this point, those 16 people you mentioned can be had for 10 years for less than the cost of a robot in much of the world. GE recently announced the creation of 1k jobs in the US and spoke of a commitment to keep the US a manufacturing power, but I fear it is too little, too late.