Deindustrialization was relative, driven by manufacturing productivity gains

Evidence

In the first place, this process of ‘deindustrialization’ typically involved in a fall in the share of employment and output accounted for by manufacturing. In other words, it was primarily a relative change - typically industry’s share of the workforce fell rather than the absolute number of industrial employees. The sectoral shift from manufacturing to services may in large part be accounted for by rapid rises in the productivity of labour in manufacturing industry, which meant that a smaller proportion of the workforce can produce a considerably larger quantity of goods; productivity growth in services is by comparison notoriously sluggish - in the United States between 1970 and 1984 it rose by only 0. — Alex Callinicos, Against Postmodernism, 464

Categorization

• XREF: The causal mechanism here — productivity-driven sectoral shift — is a classic Marxist rebuttal that extends to the reader’s broader critique: the working class didn’t vanish, its productivity leapt. — connects to: Deindustrialization made Spain’s growth model dependent on external income and debt — Mark Blyth, Austerity: The History of a Dangerous…, 186