U.S. Manufacturing Isn't Dwindling Away (or Booming)

Everybody knows that there are fewer manufacturing jobs in the U.S. than there used to be. To be precise, there are 6.998 million fewer manufacturing jobs now than when employment in the sector hit its all-time high of 19.533 million in June 1979. Manufacturing's share of nonfarm payroll employment has dropped from a wartime peak of 38.8 percent in November 1943 to 8.5 percent now.

But as econowonks have a habit of pointing out whenever the state of manufacturing in the U.S. comes under discussion, as it has with President Donald Trump's pledge to impose stiff new tariffs on steel and aluminum imports, U.S. manufacturing output hasn't collapsed. In inflation-adjusted terms, in fact, it is more than twice what it was back in 1979, when manufacturing employment peaked.