Robots aren’t killing the American Dream. Neither is trade. This is the problem.

One key piece of evidence is that the United States shed 5 million manufacturing jobs from 2000-2014, even as output over the same period rose. That suggests that automation is the primary reason for the loss. If international trade were the chief culprit, we would also expect U.S. manufacturing output to decline.

But how can automation be killing manufacturing jobs, if capital investment seems to be slowing? It’s true that both labor productivity and capital investment have been slowing down since 2000 — on average. But that decline isn’t uniform across the economy. According to a Brookings Institution report, between 1980 and 2015, advanced manufacturing and services increased productivity by 4 and 1.6 percent, respectively. Those high rates of productivity growth suggest labor-saving automation associated with high rates of capital investment. But that’s not true among less-technical manufacturing — such as textiles and food production — which posted only 0.8 percent productivity gains. Meanwhile, other services like health, education and hospitality showed almost no productivity increases at all. That means capital investment can be fairly low on average across the whole economy, even if it is high in advanced manufacturing industries, where job losses are concentrated.