The thing is that _manufacturing_, as a sector, never left:

https://fred.stlouisfed.org/series/OUTMS

By output, U.S. manufacturing has had a steady upwards trend, interrupted (as you would expect) by recessions. It's just that the jobs left. The narrative that manufacturing as a whole went overseas isn't really true; it's more that labor-intensive manufacturing industries moved overseas, while automated manufacturing industries (or final assembly plants) sprung up in the U.S.

Manufacturing is so broadly defined at the Fed level it isn't really useful in this context. Electronics manufacturing left, furniture manufacturing left, etc.. What didn't leave is the fossil fuel industry, So oil refining, and fracking related businesses helps keep manufacturing output high in dollar terms. But manufacturing as people casually think of it (factories making a product: phones, cars, computers, solar panels) really has left.

Then they should think less casually.

I've been in industry for almost 30 years. All the companies I've worked for were US owned and US based and they all did manufacturing of some sort. Including my little side-businesses.

Yes. Low-margin consumer goods like cheap toys & appliances went overseas. But cars, heavy trucks & coaches, specialty tools and industrial equipment, medical devices, high-end office machinery, manufacturing machines (heh), industrial electronics, robots, are all being made in the US.

An earlier comment alluded to labor-intensive manufacturing going offshore. I'd qualify that as "low-skill" labor intensive manufacturing. At my last job, my office was directly above the manufacturing floor and that assembly was very labor-intensive and definitely not low skill in terms of "pick up doll's body in left hand, head in right hand and plug head into body" .

Also still here: defense, aerospace, rocketry, construction, machinery (eg. Caterpillar). Basically light industry left and most heavy industry stayed, the output of the latter grew, and now some light industry is coming back (eg. textiles [1]), but with basically fully-automated factories that employ very few people.

[1] http://www.nytimes.com/2013/09/20/business/us-textile-factor...

Defense, aerospace, and rocketry are all good examples of industries that are here due to government and trade policy, not because it is cheaper or easier to build a tank in the US.

Yep, it is scary that many people don't know that US manufacturing is at all time highs.

The package says made in China. Some parts may come from the US. The machines that make the parts may come from the US. But at the end of the day if you walk down any aisle in a big box store almost everything will be stamped with made in China.

Broadcom and Intel still manufacturer chips in the US but the laptops it's packaged in is still shipping from China.

People are judging by number of jobs, not the fed calculating output. I think that's more rational than scary.

The reason that is, is because the idea of bringing back "manufacturing" implies that it'll bring back the jobs as well. That bringing back "manufacturing" means all those people who lost their assembly line jobs will get it back, and things will go back to how they were. That's the reason it keeps getting evoked.

So the other line has to keep being stated, because it needs to be known that bringing back "manufacturing" isn't going to solve the employment problem for those people, and more needs to be done.

(I kept putting manufacturing in quotes, because those that tend to talk about bringing it back generally downplay the fact that manufacturing output in the US is at an all time high.)