1. Manufacturing Employment is going to decline due to productivity improvements and automation. This is a pretty long historical trend. Employment growth in the U.S. is not going to come from the Manufacturing Sector.
2. China has passed us in total manufacturing output. They are a country with something like 5 times our population a huge number of which are employed in the manufacturing sector. Japan, Germany and every other country are way behind the U.S. and China. And we run circles around the Chinese when you compare output per employee. It is not even close.
There is a counter argument with a more positive outlook for U.S. Manufacturing in THIS ARTICLE from late 2014. The article includes the two charts below. The first shows the decline in manufacturing employment. The second shows the recovery from 2008 and the historical growth in manufacturing sales. Looking at that charts tells me that we are pretty much back on track in terms of the historical increases in our manufacturing output -despite Obama and the generally lower employment numbers.
