After rebounding from recession between 2009 and 2014, U.S. manufacturing output has grown little since the second half of 2014. Over the same period, employment in the U.S. manufacturing sector has increased slightly. These trends defy expectations that forces such as higher labor costs in the emerging economies of Asia, heightened concern about the risk of disruptions to long, complex supply chains, and the development of inexpensive domestic supplies of natural gas would bring a surge of factory production and manufacturing jobs in the United States. Changes in technology, business organization, and employment practices make it increasingly difficult to evaluate the state of the manufacturing sector. It appears that government statistics attribute a growing share of manufacturing-related jobs and output to other sectors of the economy, notably information, professional and business services, and wholesale trade. The extent to which output and employment in these sectors are related to manufacturing is difficult to quantify. However, evidence suggests that even strong growth in manufacturing is likely to have a modest impact on overall job creation, particularly for workers with lower levels of education. At the start of the 21 st century, 17.1 million Americans worked in manufacturing. This number declined during the recession that began in March 2001, in line with the historic pattern. In a departure from past patterns, however, manufacturing employment failed to recover after that recession ended in November 2001 (see Figure 1 ). By the time the most recent recession began, in December 2007, the number of manufacturing jobs in the United States had fallen to 13.7 million. Currently, 12.6 million workers are employed in the manufacturing sector. The output of U.S. manufacturers hit a cyclical bottom in June 2009. Since that time, a 22% increase in manufacturing output has been accompanied by only an 8% increase in manufacturing employment (see Figure 2 ). The low point in manufacturing employment was reached in February 2010. Since that time the manufacturing job count has risen 10%. There is no single cause of the weakness in manufacturing employment. A sharp increase in the bilateral U.S. trade deficit with China following that country's accession to the World Trade Organization in 2001 contributed importantly to manufacturing job loss in the first half of the last decade, but changes in the bilateral balance in goods trade since 2006 are not associated with changes in employment of factory workers in the United States. Cyclical forces aside, at least three distinct factors limit the prospects for job creation in the manufacturing sector, even if domestic production gains market share from imports. Some manufacturing industries, notably apparel and footwear, are tied to labor-intensive production methods that have proven difficult to automate. With labor costs accounting for a much higher share of value added in these industries than in manufacturing as a whole, declining import barriers allowed imports from low-wage countries, particularly in East Asia, to displace domestic production. From 1.3 million workers in 1980, U.S. employment in apparel manufacturing has fallen to 117,000. Leather manufacturing has seen a similar employment decline. Over the same period, U.S. output of apparel fell by 86%, and output of leather products fell by 81%. In other industries, technological improvements have enabled manufacturers to expand output without adding workers. Steelmaking offers such an example: the 83,000 people working in the industry in 2017 produced 8% more steel than nearly 399,000 workers did in 1980. Secular shifts in demand have dimmed employment prospects in some industries despite the general recovery in manufacturing output. Paper consumption, for example, was once closely associated with economic growth, but no longer; paper output has stabilized at a level about 20% lower than in the late 1990s, contributing to a 40% drop in industry employment over the same period. As cigarette consumption has waned, output in tobacco products manufacturing is down 57% since the most recent peak in 1996, and employment has fallen 55%. These changes have resulted in a significant shift in the composition of manufacturing employment even as most manufacturing industries have experienced declining employment. Food manufacturing, which two decades ago accounted for 1 in 11 manufacturing jobs, now accounts for 1 in 8; it is one of the few manufacturing sectors in which employment has grown. Transportation equipment, fabricated metal products, food manufacturing, and plastics and rubber manufacturing have added workers since the end of the last recession in 2009, and account for larger shares of manufacturing employment. Apparel, textiles, printing, and computers and electronic products now account for substantially smaller shares of manufacturing employment than was formerly the case (see Table 1 ). In the public mind, the word "factory" is associated with the concept of mass production, in which large numbers of workers perform repetitive tasks. While mass production is still an important aspect of manufacturing, routine production functions, from welding joints in truck bodies to removing plastic parts from a molding machine, have proven susceptible to automation. This has had important consequences for the nature of work in manufacturing establishments and for the skill requirements of manufacturing workers. Goods production is no longer the principal occupation of workers in the manufacturing sector. Only two in five manufacturing employees are directly involved in making things. That proportion fell 3.4 percentage points between 2000 and 2017. Employment in other occupations within the manufacturing sector, notably office clerical work, has also declined (see Figure 3 ). As of 2017, 32% of all manufacturing workers held management and professional jobs. In many manufacturing industries, the shift to higher skill requirements is even more pronounced. Total employment in the U.S. computer and electronic product manufacturing industries has declined due to automation, sharp falls in demand for certain products once produced in the United States (notably television tubes and audio equipment), and changed production economies that cause manufacturers to concentrate worldwide production in a small number of locations. Of the 1.04 million people employed in this industry in 2017, 28% were engaged in production occupations, for which a high school education may be sufficient and for which workers received median annual pay of $35,010. Some 21% of the industry's workers were in architecture and engineering occupations paying a median annual wage of $87,010, and another 13% were in computer and mathematical occupations with a median annual wage of $104,120; the latter two occupational categories require much higher education levels than production work. Similarly, some 32% of the workers in the pharmaceutical manufacturing industry are involved with production. Many of the rest have scientific skills associated with higher education levels. The increasing demand for skills in manufacturing is most visible in the diminished use of "team assemblers"—essentially, line workers in factories and warehouses. In May 2016, employment in this occupation, which typically requires little training and no academic qualifications, was 1.3 million, down 15% since 2000. Some 862,300 team assemblers worked in manufacturing in 2016, representing less than 7% of manufacturing jobs. This type of job was once the core of manufacturing. Now, 19% of all team assemblers work for employment agencies, which furnish workers to other companies on an as-needed basis. Team assemblers working for employment agencies earned an average of $12.43 per hour, some 21% less than those employed directly by manufacturing companies. The changing occupational mix within the manufacturing sector is mirrored by changing educational requirements. In 2000, 53% of all workers in manufacturing had no education beyond high school. Between 2000 and 2017, that share dropped by 11 percentage points, even as the proportion of manufacturing workers with bachelor's degrees or graduate degrees rose by 9 percentage points, to 31%. Given that college-educated workers generally command significantly higher pay in the labor market than high-school dropouts and high-school graduates, it is unlikely that manufacturers would willingly hire more-educated workers unless there is a payoff in terms of greater productivity. Despite the significant loss of manufacturing jobs between 2000 and 2017, the number of manufacturing workers with graduate degrees increased by approximately 343,000, or 34% (see Figure 4 ). Employment of workers with associate (community college or proprietary school) degrees in academic fields rose 23%, or approximately 150,000 jobs, over that period, while workers with associate degrees in occupational fields, which prepare students for immediate vocational entry and typically require less coursework in English, mathematics, and science, declined by 95,000. The proportion of manufacturing workers who are female has fallen from 32% as recently as 1993 to 28% currently (see Figure 5 ). Women have long accounted for a large share of employment in some of the industries that have experienced the steepest drops in employment, notably apparel, textiles, and electrical manufacturing. The female workforce was significantly less educated than the male workforce in manufacturing: in 2000, only 41% of female manufacturing workers had any education beyond high school, compared with 61% of their male counterparts. This gender gap in education has closed since 2000, due largely to the departure of these less educated women from the manufacturing workforce. The number of female manufacturing workers with no education beyond high school fell 46% from 2000 to 2016. As a result, the number of years of schooling of female manufacturing workers is now very similar to that of males in manufacturing. Some 32% of women workers in manufacturing in 2017 held four-year college degrees or higher degrees, almost identical to the proportion for men. Some 11% of female manufacturing workers had not completed high school; the corresponding share of male manufacturing workers was around three percentage points less. The female share of the manufacturing workforce has increased since reaching a low of 27.11% in 2014. Since then, manufacturers have added 200,000 workers along with 300,000 male workers. Policymakers traditionally have attached special importance to manufacturing because manufacturers appear to pay a wage premium, compared to employers in other industries. Based on pay, a 2012 U.S. Department of Commerce publication asserted, "manufacturing jobs are good jobs." According to that source, manufacturing jobs offered average hourly pay of $29.75 in 2010, compared to $27.47 for nonmanufacturing jobs. Including employer-provided benefits, the Commerce Department reported, manufacturing workers earned 17% more per hour than workers in other industries.