our manufacturing labor market. and the jobs we re bringing back, you know, there was a great new york times story that said, ge is bringing back jobs home. great. the jobs that were there before paid 30 bucks an hour. the new jobs ge brought back home paid $12 to $20 an hour. so, yes, we have to do better in manufacturing and drive the wages up there, too. a really good point. scott, let me ask you. do we lose out on innovation if we don t have more manufacturing jobs or bring back more? my dad who worked in industry, he says, innovation happens on the factory floor, from a guy on a line who figures out a better way to do something. it does. have you a slew of management consultants at harvard, m.i.t. and other places saying separating innovation from production was a lousy idea. that you should try to sell make things in the market you re trying to sell in. where you re innovating as well. that you lose a lot of that potential when the production goes overseas. so i do still
we could expect that trend to continue. we can also expect to see rising wages overseas. that makes u.s. manufacturing look a lot more competitive. what we don t know about is christine, is public policy, and i firmly believe that we need the right public policies, both internally and then with our trade policies, to achieve that 1 million jobs goal. i think we can get it done. i think there s public support for it. and i do think it s an economic imperative we try to grow manufacturing. regrow manufacturing. i don t think it s a guarantee. let s bring in richard. the question is, manufacturing might not be driving new job creation, even if you do have more manufacturing returning to u.s. shores. as the u.s. has lost manufacturing jobs, manufacturing output is up. are we going to see a manufacturing renaissance but it won t be a manufacturing jobs renaissance? i think the u.s. will always be a great manufacturing nation.
let s be clear. richard when you re hollowing out at middle, a middle used to be powered by those manufacturing jobs, and you remace it with jobs that don t even pay enough to send the kid to college, let alone buy a house, that s a real problem for the economy. you could have strong manufacturing but a not strong middle. it s not something people want to hear. so, the first thing we have to do is make those bad jobs better. we can t go anywhere with 60 million crappy low-wage service jobs. my dad worked at a factory. he started in 1934. took nine people to make a family wage. he came back with his service from world war ii, and with the unionization, social compact, productivity was up, he had great job in the manufacturing. we can do the same thing for service workers today. the other thing is not every manufacturing job is a good job in america. for every aircraft assembler or tool and die maker, taking home 50 grand or more a year, we have suing machine operators and others mak