In my last blog post of June 3, 2022, the question was posed: Did states with manufacturing job resiliency through the pandemic also fare better in terms of total job change? The tentative answer offered with that initial analysis and blog post is that manufacturing and total employment growth tend to go hand-in-hand — albeit more so in some states than others.

With this post, I drill down a bit more on specific sectors in manufacturing and their comparative performance through the pandemic up to mid-2022.

Composition of U.S. Manufacturing

As of mid-2022, manufacturing accounted for 12.8 million jobs or 8.4% of all non-farm jobs in the U.S. The following graph shows the distribution of these jobs by specific manufacturing sector.

Source: U.S. BLS Current Employment Statistics (CES).

As illustrated, the two largest sectors from an employment perspective are transportation and food manufacturing — each accounting for more than 13% of U.S. manufacturing jobs (in effect better than a quarter of American manufacturing when considered together). Fabricated metals represents over 11% of U.S. manufacturing. No other sector exceeds 10% of the manufacturing job total.

Pandemic Era Manufacturing Job Change

As of mid-2022, manufacturing had fully recovered from employment losses experienced in the pandemic — especially as occurred in the initial lockdown months over the Spring of 2022. While overall manufacturing employment is back to where it was pre-pandemic, some industry sectors have fared better than others in the last 2+ years — as depicted by the following graph.

What we see is a clear differentiation between manufacturing winners and losers — at least from a jobs perspective:

Somewhat surprisingly, the biggest winners are chemicals and food product manufacturing — each up by about 46,000 jobs from February 2020 to June 2022. Other strong gains ae noted for beverages, plastics/rubber, wood products and electrical equipment.
The most substantial job losers are noted as featuring printed materials and transportation equipment (each down by 43-44,000 jobs nationally). Printed materials have suffered with transition of written material from hard copy to electronic media. Transportation manufacturing has been affected by issues ranging from aircraft safety to lack of semiconductor components for vehicles. Other significant job losses are noted for the combination of primary and fabricated metal products and machinery.

Also surprisingly, computer and electronic products manufacturing added only 1,100 jobs in the U.S. over the pandemic period — a time of strong demand for these products albeit with substantial import activity.

All together, manufacturing sectors with job gains tallied close to 210,000 net new jobs added domestically over this 2+ year period. Loser sectors accounted for a nearly offsetting reduction approaching a combined total of 200,000 jobs lost.

What does the pandemic experience have to say for domestic manufacturing going forward? Two thoughts:

First, it is impressive that, as a group, manufacturers largely held their ground through the pandemic — a better track record than for many of the commercial service and institutional sectors of the economy. This is a hopeful portent for continued manufacturing reinvigoration, especially at a time of what appears to be the emerging trend of de-globalization.
Second, it is concerning that some sectors that seemingly should have performed better but did not. This is especially the case for computer and electronic products for which job counts have remained essentially flat. Similarly concerning is the weak performance of metals and machinery manufacturing. Somewhat unclear is whether touted benefits of domestic re-shoring have been blunted by other factors ranging from increased productivity (as with automation) to supply chain issues (as with securing raw materials). Job growth across these core manufacturing activities will be critical if America is to continue the economic reclamation of its heartland with reduced dependence on what may be now perceived as less reliable vendors globally.

A couple of added items may be of note. One is the extent to which paper products (including printed materials) are succumbing to electronic information. Also noted is the weak job domestic performance of petroleum and coal products even in the face of global energy supply constraints.

So, going forward, as a takeoff on Mark Twain, the rumored death of American manufacturing may prove to have been greatly exaggerated. Signs of a comeback are evident but sustained success is by no means assured.

Greater domestic economic self-reliance can be of benefit for reasons ranging from supply chain management to reduced inflationary pressure to protection of U.S. defense capability. Getting there depends less on attempting to pick winners versus losers than on fostering a level playing field globally coupled with a can-do culture where making things again becomes a source of American pride and prosperity.