Why the industy is down (in the US)

Well if Congress actually did their jobs INSTEAD of engaging in TUSCL type shit slinging, these numbers might have a chance to improve.

I think 35,000+ pages (Obamacare) is quite enough for now. Add in all the regulations from Obama's executive orders, the "tzars" (nice little reference there) and ya got quite a squeeze going on.

Do these statistics include illegal labor?

The loss of manufacturing jobs over the past 40 years to other countries which pay very low wages is the primary problem. Every manufacturing job creates 2.5 other jobs. Whether it's someone delivering raw material, someone selling the product, or someone making lunch for the worker, the economy benefits. Service sector jobs just don't cut it. They tend to be low paying, transitory jobs rather than careers. Look at strippers: They provide a service but don't create anything other than an occasional visit to a doctor for treatment of an STD.
To its credit, the Obama administration has been successfully increasing manufacturing jobs, but not yet at a pace to counter the unemployment rate.

Maybe I've been living under a rock lately, but I haven't really seen where the Obama administration has added manufacturing jobs. Can somebody help me with that one?

"One out of three adults in neither working nor actively looking for work"

That's the sentence that jumped out at me.

We're definitely are living an entitlement-driven society. I cringe when I see young people on Facebook posting pictures of their 60" big screen TV's and $5000 leather sofas while living in Section 8 housing and receiving food stamps and cash assistance.

@VH, I like your thinking... but (supposedly) "free" health care (LOL!) and the legalization of pot coming after the 2014 election cycle goes a long way to keeping a large chunk of people complacent.

@gawker: loss of manufacturing hurts, true. But the biggest problem we have is giving away our educational edge. America (and Russia to a certain extent) had a lock on the smartest minds in the work for a long time with the space race and the cold war. Nowadays, we educate Chinese and Indian college students for FREE, often on government grant fund (read your tax dollars) and the they go home and help build up those countries. WTF?

^^^
next time you're bored, do what I do and look at the PhD candidates of some of the top schools in economics, financial engineering, operations research, etc...

90% of the students, 5% are from India, and the remainder from other countries. Maybe, just maybe, there might be one or two kids from the USA.

90% of the students are from China

I agree with Alucard for once

People leaving the workforce in masses also has to do with people expecting a hand out

I read that the Millenial generation is bigger than the Baby Boom generation. So the hottie-to-geezer ratio may be shifting in our favor.

We need to get more Caribbean Latin and African women immigrating. More sex positive = better sex workers.