Industry is back. For the last several decades, the sector has been overlooked and underinvested in, as Wall Street embraced Silicon Valley, services and all things technology-related. Manufacturing, particularly in rich countries like the US, was regarded as a “has been” business. Fewer and fewer wanted to invest or work in it. The inevitable decline of factory jobs became an economic truism.
Now, in our post-neoliberal, deglobalising world, things are changing. As resilience replaces efficiency as a business mantra, countries and companies are bolstering industrial capacity in strategic sectors such as semiconductors, electric vehicles, clean technology and agriculture, even as a changing global wage landscape and energy arbitrage are bringing the production of lower margin goods such as textiles or furniture closer to home.
But in the US, an even broader post-Covid resurgence in manufacturing is under way. While American manufacturers cut 1.36mn jobs during the pandemic, August data shows that they’ve now added back 1.43mn, an increase of 67,000 workers. And the gains are spread widely across geographies and sectors.