The United States remains competitive in tradable goods and services, given our high wage rates compared to developing nations, by having high worker productivity. We achieve that in turn by high levels of capital investment per worker in the production of goods and services that can be economically exported and imported. (Of course, we also remain competitive by innovation, using intellectual property protection for some products, and in high technology areas where other countries can not compete effectively.) Where once Americans with little education could earn enough in factory jobs to live a middle class life, even though we still manufacture a great deal of product, due to automation of the factories there are many fewer such factory jobs.
Thus our workforce must be prepared to work in fields like education and health care, or to work in highly technical fields in tradable goods and service production. Education is needed for those jobs.
As the graph shows, people in American who have little education face hard economic times. It is in these areas too that we have lots of illegal immigration from people who still want our lowest paying jobs.
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