What Has Happemed to Manufacturing in the U.S.?

 I have written this in reaction to an article from The New Yorker, (https://www.newyorker.com/news/us-journal/will-trumps-broken-promises-to-working-class-voters-cost-him-the-election) which I encourage you to read.  And my question is, as the title of this post says, What has happened to manufacturing in the U.?  There are two aspects to this.  The first--and, as I see it, more important--is what has happened to manufacturing output.  The chart below begins by looking at manufacturing output in the U.S. from 1972 through 2020.

Manufacturing output rose steadily from 1972 until the 2008 recession.  When the recovery got underway in 2010, manufacturing output rose again, at roughly the same rate as in the 1972-2008 period.  The pandemic of 2020 occasioned a sharp decline (falling by 11% between December 2019 and April 2020), with a rebound between April 2020 and September.  At that point, manufacturing output was about halfway back to t\o its end of 2019 level.  But the decline in manufacturing output does not, overall, to be a long-term trend for the economy.  The declines in manufacturing outpput that have occurred are related to economy-wide events, like recessions and the pandemic.

Manufacturing employment, on the other hand, has behaved differently.  

Manufacturing employment was roughly unchanged between 1980 and 2005, at around 170,000.  But even before the 2008 recession, manufacturing employment had begun  to decline,  Between 2005 and the end of the 2008 recession, about 50,000 jobs were lost (about 25,000 before the recession hit, and an additional 25,000 in the recession)/.  The recession clearly hit manufacturing harder than the other sectors of the economy.  While manufacturing output fell by about 11%, though, employment obviously fell a lot more.  On the other hand, employment recovered fairly well, rising by about 12% (and 12,000 jobs) between 2008 and 2020.  All of this, however, tells us one very significant thing:  Manufacturing employment as a percentage of total employment was generally declining.  When manufacturing employment was remaining stable, overall employment was rising.  When recessions hit, manufacturing was hit harder. 

In the early 1970s, manufacturing accounted for about 25% of all jobs,  The decline from 1972 to 2010 was basically a constant percentage decline; by 2010, manufacturing accounted for only about 9% of all jobs--on average, about 0.4 percentage points a year for 38 years.  What's interesting, though, is that the decline (in manufacturing jobs as a percentage of all jobs) seems to have stopped.  For the last decade, manufacturing has accounted for about 8% to 9% of all jobs in the U,S.  And, between 1960 and the present, manufacturing has accounted for roughly 12% of total US output, with very little variation (https://www.brookings.edu/wp-content/uploads/2016/06/us-manufacturing-past-and-potential-future-baily-bosworth.pdf).  

The relatively constant ratio of manufacturing output to total output, coupled with a decline in manufacturing's share of total employment has an implication.  That is that the productivity (output per worker, output per hour) in manufacturing has been consistently rising.  This should mean consistently rising (inflation-adjusted) earnings for workers in manufacturing.  And, since 2010, compensation in manufacturing has increased by about 25%.