A SPECIAL REPORT It’s All About the Technology


President Barack Obama greets manufacturing workers in August 2010, following his remarks at Ford Motor Co.’s Chicago Assembly Plant.


Sarah A. Webster Editor in Chief


A


s vital as it is, manufacturing—the art, science and business of making things—has not always been fully appreciated for its impact on the American economy.


The proof of that fact may be in the debates about manufacturing’s economic value that waxed on decade after decade as the industry, and eventually the economy, tumbled toward collapse.


While many within industry warned about manufactur-


ing’s slide—fi rst in production work, then in jobs and then in the technologies used to make things—it was the Great Recession of 2007-2009 that, for many, served as a climax, a brutal wake-up call, to those long-feared ramifi cations. The staggering number of lost jobs. Sagging wages. Damaged communities. A wilted view of the future. With renewed understanding since then—and a hint of “we-told-you-so” in their step—a focused network of aca- demic, business, and government leaders across this nation has been quietly working to fi x this mess. They have crafted an ambitious strategic plan for a once-in-a-generation invest-


2 AdvancedManufacturing.org | June 2015


ment in manufacturing that could serve as the centerpiece for a new high-tech industrial era in America. Surprisingly, this plan has received a level of bipartisan support that has not been seen for years, if not decades, for manufacturing.


A Manufacturing Moonshot Since the end of the Great Recession, much of the


public’s attention on America’s manufacturing renaissance has centered on the return of a signifi cant, but relatively small, number of manufacturing jobs. More than 5.7 million manufacturing jobs were lost between 2000 and 2011, as more than 65,000 US manufacturing establishments closed their doors, according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics. Since then, more than 660,000 direct manufacturing jobs, or 11.5% of those lost, have been added back, bringing manufacturing employment to a total of 12.2 million. Given that direct manufacturing employment peaked in 1979 at 19 million, critics of manufacturing investments like to point at today’s relatively low numbers as proof that


Offi cial White House Photo by Pete Souza


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