Posted by scapozzola on 03/11/2011

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Both The Economist and Time have articles that say U.S. manufacturing is doing well.  No one is more hopeful about this than ManufactureThis. 

The suggestions that U.S. manufacturing is back on its feet comes from a recent uptick in manufacturing employment.  In the past few months, the nation's factories have re-hired some of their laid-off workers.  Unfortunately, this is just a small reversal of a much larger trend.

In the preceding decade, from January of 2000 to December of 2009, the U.S. lost 5,836,000 manufacturing jobs, an average of 54,000 per month.  In the past year, the United States added a total of 152,000 manufacturing jobs at an average rate of 11,800 per month.  The was the first yearly gain in manufacturing jobs since 1998. 

If we continue to create jobs at a rate of 11,800 per month, it will take over 40 years to get back to the employment level we saw in January of 2000.  There’s a long way to go, and we need to adopt a national manufacturing strategy to help regain these jobs.