Tag: Manufacturing in the United States

Manufacturing in the United States is a vital sector. The United States is the world’s third largest manufacturer with a record high real output in Q1 2018 of $2.00 trillion well above the 2007 peak before the Great Recession of $1.95 trillion.

The U.S. manufacturing industry employed 12.35 million people in December 2016 and 12.56 million in December 2017, an increase of 207,000 or 1.7%. Though still a large part of the US economy, in Q1 2018 manufacturing contributed less to GDP than the ‘Finance, insurance, real estate, rental, and leasing’ sector, the ‘Government’ sector, or ‘Professional and business services’ sector.

Though manufacturing output robustly recovered from the Great Recession to reach an all-time high in 2018, manufacturing employment has been declining since the 1990s. This ‘jobless recovery’ made job creation or preservation in the manufacturing sector an important topic in the 2016 United States presidential election.