Having a strong manufacturing base is very important. It helps the service sector prosper to have a strong manufacturing base. It means that we avoid some of those global imbalances. So the simple answer is yes. We need a strong manufacturing base for prosperity and growth in the United States. This is at Brookings, a weekly in-depth look at issues behind the news. This week, can strengthening our manufacturing sector, strengthen the U.S. economy. In the last 13 years, the U.S. has lost more than 30% of its manufacturing jobs. An increase in outsourcing and automation has resulted in a decrease in jobs and productivity. And as the manufacturing sector weakens and the trade deficit grows, the nation's competitiveness and economic cloud suffer. A beefed up manufacturing base could create jobs and strengthen the economy notes senior fellow Martin Bailey. But without a comprehensive plan, the future of the sector may be bleak. Manufacturing employment has declined since 1980. Manufacturing employment as a share of total employment has been declining for over 50 years. So do we have any prospect of getting a significant number of jobs back in manufacturing? Well, manufacturing employment is rising a little at the moment. So we are getting a few of those jobs back. It's actually very hard to see that we will get a large number so that if you look ahead to 2020, we'll manufacturing employment in the United States be substantially higher than it is today. And, you know, we don't know the future, but even under some fairly favorable circumstances, it's unlikely we'll have a lot more jobs in manufacturing than we do today. The U.S. trade deficit is large and growing. So what does this mean to the manufacturing sector? Even if we were able to balance trade in manufacturing, which is by the way not something we've done since I think the 60s, would that mean we'd get millions of new jobs? Unfortunately not in my judgment. And there's a lot of controversy around this. Many other people, including other people, Brookings think that's wrong. If we had balanced trade and we looked at how much of manufacturing goods we're going to consume in the U.S. and then take into account the trade, and then we make an estimate of how fast productivity is going to grow. So how many people does it take to produce that amount of manufactured goods? The answer that you get is pretty much the manufacturing employment. If we're lucky, we'll stay flat between now and 2020. Martin, let's look a little bit more closely at this. And I want you to tell me what manufacturing losses or loss of the sector really means to people, to communities. One of the roles that it played historically is that young people, and it turned out to be particularly young men, although not always young men, a lot of women worked in some of the industries, who did not have advanced education, could get pretty good well-paid jobs in the manufacturing sector. And that has really largely disappeared as an option for increased employment. And that's been a serious problem. It's affected the distribution of income. It's affected the prospects of both men and women who do not have a college education. Another thing that we found is that areas, metropolitan areas, or just states, counties that have manufacturing sectors, manufacturing companies come into those locations tend to do better than counties or cities where you do not have manufacturing coming in. So there's no question that there is some spillover from manufacturing into the general population, tends to create jobs in other areas. You say that the US needs to really rethink, retool its post-secondary education so that we can train young people for good-paying jobs in manufacturing. Folks that either graduate from high school but don't go on a college or spend maybe a year or so in a community college. And the kids that don't graduate from high school at all. And they are having trouble finding good jobs. I think it is true that US manufacturing would be stronger today and stronger 20 years from now if we could create a more skilled workforce. The best way to fortify retool strength in the manufacturing sector and consequently our economy is through a comprehensive, deliberate approach. Where do we start? We have to improve the workforce. And we also have to take advantage of the position we already have. Many technology companies like to locate where other technology companies are. That of course accounts for the success of Silicon Valley which is still very healthy. Or around Austin, Texas, 128 in Boston or the Carolina, the research triangle. Well, a clean economy, clean jobs. They have to be a part of this process, don't they? There is a certain amount of I think wishful thinking about carbon that the green economy is going to create millions of jobs. It may but it's going to be a struggle and it's going to raise if we really do shift to a low carbon economy. There are going to be some costs associated with that as well. I think that's something the United States has to be in that business. Even if there's only a 1% probability that humankind are going to create serious problems for themselves through global warming, I still think that's something we need to invest in, the technology and how we find ways without bankrupting our economy of moving to a low carbon situation. And what about the mantra that we need to be an exporting nation? We need to increase our exports. If we can get the dollar right, then we can export and then if we can export, we don't have to bring as much capital in and it doesn't throw the value of the dollar off. So we need to get a virtuous cycle going here. We're doing a lot of exporting. We're not having a lot of capital inflows. And we get a reasonable equilibrium value of the dollar at which American companies are competitive. Stay up to date with the latest research, learn about Brookings events, and search our directory of experts all from your mobile device. To download Brookings for your Blackberry Android iPhone or iPad, go to Brookings.edu slash mobile.