World News Insights
1-3 Minute Gist

All Topics Article

Andy Grove: How America Can Create Jobs

BusinessWeek Original article ›
LyrArc Article Gist
Andy Grove makes this passionate plea for the dignity of workers in America in 2010. It is worth reading in 2020 what this founder of Intel Corp and pioneering spirit of Silicon Valley has to say.

Andy Grove of Intel says there is something seriously wrong when the unemployment rate in the Bay Area is higher than the 9.7% national average for the USA. American companies have added jobs like crazy in Asia, but things are sputtering back home. Hon Hai has 800,000 employees and makes most of the electronic and computer products for American companies.

Grove says startups are not the answer, unless they scale up and create jobs the way Intel did starting back in 1968, with a $3 million capital infusion by investors. The move from the first production model to mass production is critical, as companies hire thousands of people. Innovation and scaling up have to go together. He makes his point clearly by pointing out that Apple has 25,000 employees. For every Apple employee there are 10 employees in China working on Apple iMacs, iPods, iPhones. And he adds that the same 10 to 1 relationship applies to other U.S. tech companies. And here Grove asks the tough question by first posing an answer. He says it sounds like- no big deal, we keep the high paying jobs, we keep most of the profits, but what kind of society are we going to have with highly paid professional workers and lots of people unemployed? And he doesn't mention that there are a lot more young people unemployed. He says the US has become very inefficient at creating tech jobs, and it would be a great mistake not to act decisively early on. And adds that the investments in such areas as solar power and electric car batteries have to be made early on to maintain leadership in these areas.

Grove faults academics like Alan Blinder and others who say loss of manufacturing jobs and whole industries was no big deal. The U.S. has forgotten the value of manufacturing jobs. He wants to see America focus on jobs and rebuild its industrial base. And less of transferring engineering knowhow and new technologies overseas, technology that can help bring innovation and scaling up of factories at home. In his view individual companies doing their own thing, in a misguided fashion that jobs don't matter, is not the answer to the situation we face. The industrial economies of Asia, China at the present day, have focussed on jobs and technology, and scaled up.

Grove reminds readers of the situation in America in 1932, when jobless veterans demonstrating outside the White House in large numbers were dispersed by soldiers with live ammunition and fixed bayonets. This makes him shudder at the very thought of it, and brings back memories of his early years in Hungary, as a young man in 1956.

Are we listening?


America and Toolbox Values

07/01/2010

How Americans perceive manufacturing and the cultural values surrounding this.

Grouped Articles

Andy Grove: How America Can Create Jobs

BusinessWeek 07/01/2010

Americans Sour on Trade

Wall Street Journal 10/02/2010

After Michigan Loss, Hillary Clinton Sharpens Message on Jobs and Trade

New York Times 03/09/2016

What Happened to the Craftsmanship Spirit? A Essay

New York Times 07/21/2012

Companies See High-Tech Factories as Fonts of Ideas

New York Times 12/13/2012

U.S. Manufacturing Decline Raises Concern About Innovation

New York Times 02/12/2011

Poverty among white Americans in 2010-2015

03/11/2009

A previous generation could count on good jobs in manufacturing with only a high school education. The last two decades of globalization have hit manufacturing jobs and wages in the U.S. hard and the impact is greatest on people without a college education. Other problems aggravating income and causing poverty is the increase of dropout rates from the labor force of young white American men, the effects of drug use and the lack of stable marraiges. This creates an underclass of whites in America, similiar to the underclass among minorities.

Grouped Articles

Racial Wealth Gap Widened During Recession

New York Times 04/28/2013

Income Slides to 1996 Levels

Wall Street Journal 09/14/2011

Young and Isolated

New York Times 06/22/2013

OECD report cites rising income inequality - The Washington Post

Washington Post 12/06/2011

U.S. Schools Chief Arne Duncan Labors to Straddle Political Divide

Wall Street Journal 07/22/2013

Hungry in America

New York Times 02/10/2010

Amy Goldstein on life and work in U.S. communities with a eroding manufacturing base such as Janesville, Wisconsin

04/07/2009

Grouped Articles

Andy Grove: How America Can Create Jobs

BusinessWeek 07/01/2010

Americans Sour on Trade

Wall Street Journal 10/02/2010

China's Export Pain May Be Mexico's Gain

Wall Street Journal 02/06/2012

Bayer: Pressure on Prices Has Bad Side Effects

Wall Street Journal 02/07/2012

The White Underclass

New York Times 02/08/2012

Economy Falling Years Behind Full Speed

New York Times 04/07/2009

Apple iPhone manufacturing in China, and the U.S. trade deficit

07/01/2010

How much of the iPhone is manufactured in China? 3.6% by China's Hon Hai, but this does not account for South Korean and Japanese suppliers using manufacturing bases in China. German suppliers also have Chinese factories. Production costs at Hon Hai itself are rock bottom, as a result the other parts would be too expensive if not manufactured in China. Reliable statistics would include the value of all suppliers who build i-phone parts in China and take into account the impact on the US of manufacturing jobs that would otherwise be available in the US.

Grouped Articles

Andy Grove: How America Can Create Jobs

BusinessWeek 07/01/2010

US-China trade relations: Speak less softly, carry a stick

Economist 09/25/2010

Americans Sour on Trade

Wall Street Journal 10/02/2010

Apple Says App Store Sales Rose 50% in 2014

Wall Street Journal 01/09/2015

U.S. Car-Making Boom? Not for Auto-Industry Workers

Wall Street Journal 03/24/2015

Apple Services Shut Down in China in Startling About-Face

New York Times 04/21/2016

Export of manufacturing jobs from the U.S.

07/01/2010

Grouped Articles

Does America Need Manufacturing?

New York Times 08/24/2011

Andy Grove: How America Can Create Jobs

BusinessWeek 07/01/2010

Whirlpool Shifts Some Production to U.S. From Mexico

Wall Street Journal 12/20/2013

Americans Sour on Trade

Wall Street Journal 10/02/2010

A part-timer boom, or blip? - The Washington Post

Washington Post 07/16/2014

Why Manufacturing Still Counts in the U.S. Economy

Wall Street Journal 01/14/2015

The nature of unemployment in this U.S. downturn as men, young people and the less educated are the worst hit groups.

03/11/2009

In this US downturn men are hit harder than women with job losses in manufacturing and construction, the less educated hit hardest, and young people also hit hard.

Grouped Articles

Young and Isolated

New York Times 06/22/2013

Wanted: Jobs for the New 'Lost' Generation

Wall Street Journal 09/14/2013

Women Reach a Milestone in Job Market

Wall Street Journal 11/18/2013

Andy Grove: How America Can Create Jobs

BusinessWeek 07/01/2010

Americans Sour on Trade

Wall Street Journal 10/02/2010

More Men in Prime Working Ages Don't Have Jobs

Wall Street Journal 02/06/2014

U.S. manufacturing cost-competitiveness with China and Mexico leading to the return of outshored manufacturing jobs

07/01/2010

Grouped Articles

China Manufacturers Survive by Moving to Asian Neighbors

Wall Street Journal 05/02/2013

China Factories Try Karaoke, Speed Dating to Keep Workers

Wall Street Journal 05/03/2013

Does America Need Manufacturing?

New York Times 08/24/2011

Mexico, China Seek to Jump-Start Trade

Wall Street Journal 06/04/2013

Strains Show in China's Job Market

Wall Street Journal 06/11/2013

Robots May Revolutionize China's Electronics Manufacturing

Wall Street Journal 09/24/2013

Andy Grove and the scaling up at home that American companies need to do.

05/29/2010

Andy Grove brushes off talk of sending technologies and jobs much needed at home to China, with the talk he hears of "a China strategy." He doesn't see how an America with high paying jobs and mass of unemployed could work. He says American companies have failed to scale up, the way Intel did in the seventies. For every Apple employee there are 10 employees in China working on Mac's, Iphones, and Ipads. The idea of manufacturing as not important is misguided and he would like to see America rebuild its industrial base.

Grouped Articles

Hon Hai to Raise Workers' Pay

Wall Street Journal 05/29/2010

Americans Sour on Trade

Wall Street Journal 10/02/2010

Apple Says App Store Sales Rose 50% in 2014

Wall Street Journal 01/09/2015

After Michigan Loss, Hillary Clinton Sharpens Message on Jobs and Trade

New York Times 03/09/2016

Andy Grove: How America Can Create Jobs

BusinessWeek 07/01/2010

Yuan Revaluation for China's Own Sake

Wall Street Journal 10/02/2010

California 2020 Utopia in Dystopia- Extremes of wealth, sky high housing prices, wildfires and the pandemic

08/27/2020

The California in the early postwar years during the presidency of Truman and Eisenhower when different values prevailed, when Jerry Brown says his mother studied "basically for free", and the California of 2020. A struggle for the lost soul of America- its lost values for what Carl Sandburg called "The People, Yes." The ideas that led to the shipping overseas of America's manufacturing industry with disastrous results were created in some pockets of California such as San Jose and San Francisco.

Grouped Articles

Heat, Smoke and Covid Are Battering the Workers Who Feed America

NYTimes.com 08/28/2020

A journey through a land of extreme poverty: welcome to America

The Guardian 12/15/2017

Majority of U.S. public school students are in poverty - The Washington Post

Washington Post 01/17/2015

Wildfires around San Francisco Bay Area grow to larger than Rhode Island – live

The Guardian 08/24/2020

California ‘never should have re-opened’ as Covid-19 cases surge to record high

France 24 07/17/2020

How Success Against the Coronavirus Turned to Crisis in California

WSJ 07/01/2020


Support LyrArc

We took a different way to help millions around the world build educated informed mindsets that affects and shapes their lives. For a future that is open, global and digital, with everyone having access to high quality information. We believe in the renewal of America, renewal of Europe, the renewal of India, the rest of Asia, Latin America and Africa. The renewal of our supply chains, health, education, infrastructure, as we rebuild our countries after the pandemic. Literacy and knowledge we believe cannot thrive and grow in a world of web bots, web crawlers, or AI. This requires human curiosity, human learning, and human imagination. We take as inspiration the saying- “One has to be free, and as broad as sky. One has to have a mind that is crystal clear, only then can truth shine in it.” Every contribution whether big or small is precious- in this crisis and ahead.

Support Lyrarc from as small as $1


Copyright © 2006 - 2026 Intelilinks LLC
Terms and Conditions | Copyright Policy | Privacy Policy | Contact Us