The nation shed manufacturing jobs at a steady pace over most of the last quarter century. A combination of trade deals, automation and economic recessions sent the number of manufacturing jobs plummeting, with 6 million jobs being lost by 2011.
But since then, about half a million jobs have been regained.
They’re not the same jobs that left. They’re not coming back everywhere, or even in the same places where jobs were lost. The map of where products are made in this country is being redrawn.
The nation’s biggest cities show the biggest manufacturing job losses.
Across the Northeast and in urban centers like Los Angeles and Dallas, only one county in seven has seen factory jobs increase since 2011. Manufacturing does tend to account for a relatively small share of big city jobs, typically about 10 percent or less.
Across the rest of the more than 2,600 counties with factory jobs, manufacturing employment grew in more than one-third. There are more than 330 counties where factory jobs are up more than 20 percent since 2008.
Prince George’s County, Md. lost 4,716 manufacturing jobs, a 32 percent loss, from 1990 to 2008. The county lost an additional 2,817 jobs, a 29 percent loss, from 2008 to 2015.
Not all manufacturing jobs are created equal
Some jobs are unlikely to come back, no matter what.
Jobs in the knitting and cut-and-sew operations of clothing manufacturers, for example, amount to only one-seventh of 1990’s workforce. For the textile mills that make fiber and fabrics, it’s one-fourth.
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