The Fact
In June 1979, manufacturing accounted for about 22% of U.S. nonfarm employment. By June 2019, manufacturing accounted for about 9%. Over that period, total nonfarm employment grew from about 90.1 million to 150.8 million while manufacturing employment fell.
What This Means
The American job market did not merely add new industries on top of the old one. Its composition changed dramatically. Manufacturing went from roughly one job in five to less than one in ten while service-providing industries expanded.
Sources
- U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics, “Forty years of falling manufacturing employment,” Beyond the Numbers, 2020, Table 1.