Wages down, weird, theyre all over in China "that dont pay a living wage"
Employment down, yeah, know how much it costs an hour to have someone work for you, BEFORE you pay them?
Then get into OSHA and all the rest of that.
And manufacturing, yeah, cant do that, thank the EPA.

Costs, fines, legal BS employees can pull, and the fact there are so many regulations and junk to go thru to actually be compliant, just to try to avoid a fine, or several. No one can afford or wants to set up a new business.

As for self employeed, there's plenty more, theyre just working cash jobs making 15/hr instead of employee jobs at 10/hr.