More Than 3/4 Of Manufacturing Jobs Lost During The Recession Have Not Returned

From The Wall Street Journal, Real Time Economics, "Number of the Week: Manufacturing Nowhere Near Regaining Lost Jobs" by Timothy Aeppel:

22%: The share of U.S. manufacturing jobs lost during the recent downturn that has been regained during the recovery.

American manufacturing was creamed in the recession. From December 2007 to December 2009, factories shed nearly 2.3 million jobs, or 16.5% of the sector’s total. Of course, the recession ended in June of 2009—but factories kept dumping workers for months thereafter. The rest of the economy suffered big job losses in the downturn too, but nowhere near the bloodbath in manufacturing. Jobs in all other categories combined fell about 5% during the same two-year period.

Source: The Wall Street Journal

Since December of 2009, factories have added 504,000 jobs—a tidy gain, to be sure, but one that represents less than a quarter of the jobs lost during the meltdown. The rest of the economy, meanwhile, has done considerably better. The U.S. has regained 6.2 million non-manufacturing jobs since December of 2009—which means the rest of the economy has regained more than 96% of the jobs lost.