Manufacturing employment has grown slowly since returning to pre-pandemic levels 

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Vice President Kamala Harris frequently touts the growth in US manufacturing employment since she and President Joseph R. Biden took office in 2021, but those gains are weaker than the numbers suggest.

The United States lost 1.37 million manufacturing jobs between January and April 2020 due to the shutdowns and other disruptions caused by the COVID-19 pandemic. Manufacturing employment began to rebound around June 2020 and continued rising after President Biden took office in January 2021. After manufacturing payrolls returned to pre-pandemic levels in September 2022, their growth slowed. By July 2024, manufacturing employment was just 1 percent higher than in January 2019, shortly before the pandemic hit. Though Biden administration programs have spurred rapid manufacturing employment growth in nontraditional locations, they haven’t created a broad renaissance in US manufacturing.

Manufacturing still has an important role to play in providing the goods necessary to rebuild US infrastructure, promote the digital revolution, and ease the transition to a decarbonized US economy. But because of manufacturing’s relatively small overall employment share and its growing demand for more educated workers than in decades past, the sector no longer offers plentiful, middle-class jobs for workers without a college education. Although the Biden programs may achieve important social objectives, they are unlikely to improve most of those workers’ opportunities or help most of the country’s disadvantaged places.

This PIIE Chart is adapted from Robert Z. Lawrence’s Policy Brief, Is the United States undergoing a manufacturing renaissance that will boost the middle class? 

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