Manufacturing has become both bigger and smaller. Between 2000 and 2017, the worldwide value of manufactured products has more than doubled, from $6.1 trillion to $13.2 trillion. Meanwhile, the relative importance of manufacturing is dropping fast, retracing the earlier retreat of agriculture (now just 4 percent of the world’s economic product). Based on the United Nations’ uniform national statistics, the manufacturing sector’s contribution to global economic product declined from 25 percent in 1970 to less than 16 percent by 2017.
