Since the end of the Great Recession, U.S. manufacturing jobs increased steadily, from 11.5 million in December 2009 to 12.9 million in November 2019. Then came the COVID-19 pandemic. In just five months, we lost nearly 1.4 million jobs. Fortunately, that trend began reversing in May, and the sector has recovered 623,000 jobs through July. Still, there’s a lot of work to do.
Beyond the economic and job losses, the pandemic exposed our overreliance on imports of medical devices and pharmaceuticals. Clearly, we must think differently about how and where to make our products.