The Chinese laborers working in BYD and foxconn factories have higher wages than their equivalents in Mexico and Vietnam building products sold for 3-5x as much in the US. The cheapest labor in the world is found in Africa and yet Western industrial manufacturing has largely ignored the continent. The price of labor isn't the most important factor here.
Western countries wouldn't have moved manufacturing to China in the past if wages weren't cheaper.
I think the cost of labour now is kind of irrelevant. It was the cost of labour (and China being a stable country with favourable rule of law) that drove offshoring in the 90s and 2000s. The Chinese manufacturers chose to invest in process improvement and automation rather than just chasing the cheapest labour - and so now they've got a massive technical advantage.
> The Chinese laborers working in BYD and foxconn factories have higher wages than their equivalents in Mexico and Vietnam building products sold for 3-5x as much in the US.
I'm having a hard time parsing this. Also, source?
> The cheapest labor in the world is found in Africa and yet Western industrial manufacturing has largely ignored the continent. The price of labor isn't the most important factor here.
... Yeah this seems fair. I think a lot of Africa has an infrastructure problem - it doesn't matter how cheaply you can manufacture if you can't move large volumes of raw materials/parts to the factory and finished goods from the factory. Plus many areas in Africa have security issues which make them less attractive places to do business. Geographically, a lot of the continent is cursed with hard to navigate rivers as well (the upper Nile being an exception), so only coastal shipping is really viable.
Re: wages, we have info from reporting. BYD had protests last year when they cut worker overtime at one of their factories, dropping salaries that were previously 8.5k-11.5k USD to 5-6k. Foxconn offers base rate around $2.50/hr, so 5k USD without overtime (which you'll inevitably work). This used to be higher as well.
Mexican autoworker wages came up during the GM UAW negotiations. Those range from about $9/day (~3k USD) up. Higher paying positions tend to go to Americans crossing the border.
Vinfast pays about 100M dong (4k USD with bonus) to their factory workers in Vietnam, which is quite a decent wage locally from what I understand.
