In February 2001, just before the post-dot-com recession, 17 million Americans had manufacturing jobs.[57] This dropped sharply during the recession and never recovered—jobs stayed flat at around 14 million all through the mid-2000s boom despite a substantial increase in output.[58] In December 2007, at the start of the Great Recession, about 13.7 million Americans were working in manufacturing, and this had fallen to 11.4 million by February 2010.[59] Manufacturing output quickly rebounded and by 2018 was back near all-time highs—but many of the lost jobs never came back.[60] Even in November
...more
