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U.S. Manufacturing: Dying... or Still Going Strong?
2006 U.S.-China Business Council

"The U.S. share of global manufacturing is just over 22%-the same as it was in 1995 (it has been hovering around 20% since 1982)."

That's remarkable, because since the U.S. became an open economy around 1980, U.S. trade deficits increased, reaching over $800 billion in 2007. The U.S. has been the main engine of global growth pulling the rest of the world's economies.

The State of U.S. Manufacturing
September 17, 2003
Bruce Bartlett

"It is important to remember that much of the change in industrial employment is an effect of changes in the classification of various jobs. Big companies used to do everything in house, so that people like janitors and accountants were classified as "manufacturing" workers simply because they worked for manufacturing companies. Over the years, such companies discovered that it was more economical to outsource such work. That is why "business services" is one of the fastest rising categories of employment in the United States."

Leontief Paradox:

"Leontief found that the U.S., the most capital-abundant country in the world, exported labor-intensive commodities and imported capital-intensive commodities, in contradiction with Heckscher-Ohlin theory."

The U.S. may have more human capital than the rest of the world combined (e.g. percentage of revenues and profits earned in Information and Biotech firms, proportion of Nobel Prizes, percentage of top universities, etc.).

U.S. real manufacturing output (in billions of chained 2000 dollars) almost doubled in the 20 years between 1987 and 2007, from $866 billion in 1987 to $1,618 billion in 2007.

Charts:

http://1.bp.blogspot.com/_otfwl2zc6Qc/S7uiCeOO8WI/AAAAAAAANLg/F2o_zQsNTEM/s1600/mfg3.jpg

http://2.bp.blogspot.com/_otfwl2zc6Qc/S7ssSIK8wgI/AAAAAAAANLQ/Z-Lm-6BgsEw/s1600/mfg1.jpg

http://2.bp.blogspot.com/_otfwl2zc6Qc/S7ssRlZWqBI/AAAAAAAANLI/5a1uW-A5IPs/s1600/mfg2.jpg

http://1.bp.blogspot.com/_otfwl2zc6Qc/S7wCSklc9II/AAAAAAAANMA/Vl7nJA1hZPA/s1600/mfgjobs.jpg

http://4.bp.blogspot.com/_otfwl2zc6Qc/S7v_t-YLdiI/AAAAAAAANL4/mvqKtxmrbg8/s1600/farmjobs.jpg

MP: The trend in manufacturing in the U.S. is following the same pattern as farming: we're able to produce more and more output in both sectors with fewer and fewer workers, due to technological advances and significant increases in worker productivity. We're much better off as a country with only 2.6% of our workforce in farming compared to having 90% of our population involved in farming, and we're also much better off as a country with only 9% of our workforce toiling in factories compared to having 20 or 30% of our workers employed in manufacturing.