It’s Time for a Repair Jobs Revolution

Fostering repair will give people access to affordable products, make a huge dent in the e-waste problem, and create jobs.

Local jobs

Repair jobs can’t be outsourced—who would ship a washing machine from Chicago to Shanghai for repairs?

Digital bridges

Fixing our out-of-use electronics will employ people and bridge the digital divide.

60 seamstresses

It’s already starting: Patagonia employs seamstresses to repair their clothes—in the USA!

Unemployment wastes good workers

“Mass joblessness is a shameful waste of human resources… and now threatens to create an underclass of long-term unemployed whose skills are atrophying.”

—Economist Alan Blinder

For every 1000 tons of electronics…

Landfilling

Repair Manuals are Essential

Products are designed in the US and Europe.

They’re manufactured by legions of workers in Asia.

Repair shops in Asia thrive on the information shared by those manufacturers.

Repair workers are struggling because they don’t have the information they need.

Repair is an opportunity.

6.9 million tons

of e-waste was generated by the US in 2016.

of shredded electronics could be easily repaired or refurbished.

345,000 jobs

would be created by repairing 23% of our out-of-use electronics.

25% of jobs at risk

Economists Alan Blinder and Alan Kreuger say 25% of US jobs are "offshorable"—but repair jobs aren’t.

Respect the trades

Manual jobs are critical to our economic future—these jobs are skilled, stable, and in demand.

62x more stable

Manufacturing jobs are 62 times more likely to be offshored than installation, maintenance, and repair jobs.

Let’s bring back the trades.

“We are lending money we don’t have to kids who can’t pay it back to train them for jobs that no longer exist. That’s nuts.”

iFixit’s open source electronics repair manuals have sparked a resurgence of local electronics repair shops.

Out-of-use electronics could help bridge the digital divide.

There are 2.5 billion people without a cellphone.

While we’re drowning in waste electronics, many people don’t have fast enough internet to post a resume online.

Cell phones directly led to the Arab Spring revolutions. The United Nations has deemed access to the internet a basic human right. Accessible technology changes lives.

Americans alone discard 416,000 cell phones per day—and yet 2.5 billion people don’t have access to a cell phone.

There are 2.5 billion people without a cellphone.

We get letters every day from people who have started their own successful repair businesses.

Owen Cunneely started his own business fixing laptops and iPhones when he was just a teenager. Robert Litt teaches students to repair electronics and simultaneously equips classrooms with desperately-needed, inexpensive electronics.

The Repair Jobs Revolution - iFixit