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My understanding (I have seen this stated before on HN, but don't have a source at the moment), is that there is currently more manufacturing in America than ever before. It is just of the more mechanized sort, it does not require nearly as many unskilled or low-skilled laborers as it once did.

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This chart (standardized to 1973 peak = 100) shows what you're saying:

http://research.stlouisfed.org/fredgraph.png?g=rrU

We're doing 2.5x the manufacturing with 40% fewer employees.

>We're doing 2.5x the manufacturing with 40% fewer employees.

This is very misleading. The reason is because we largely only choose to keep the factories alive that we can almost fully automate. The goods that don't lend themselves to cheap, low maintenance automation are imported.

This makes the most economic sense from a business owner's perspective. Free trade from sweat shops that have little or no regulations (environmental or other) or labor laws... yeah that is easy to compete with.

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