The taxes and regulatory burden on business in the US must be worse then ever.
I am a CNC Machinist, I work for a company in England that supplies parts to the Aerospace industry. In the last few months we have been absolutely swamped with orders from the US, they are outsourcing work to the UK (that speaks volumes)
I am currently working 12 hour shifts, 7 days a week. I’ve not had a day off since March.
Manufacturing here has been beaten to its knees as has a lot of other business. One of the big problems in your field is lack of skilled labor. We have too few trade schools and journeyman programs. Instead we have droves of marginal college kids with useless degrees and less passion and unions that are primarily political hack organizations.
I don’t know what a CNC Machinist there makes but I know of one major manufacturer here in Houston in oilfield equipment that pays CNC programmers a whopping $16 an hour plus benefits, good benefits but that is paltry wages. We pay laborers more than that.