Opinion: The Myth of Manufacturing’s Demise

William Sampson is a lifelong woodworker, and he has been an advocate for small-scale entrepreneurs and lean manufacturing since the 1980s. He was the editor of Fine Woodworking magazine in the early 1990s and founded WoodshopBusiness magazine, which he eventually sold and merged with CabinetMaker magazine. He helped found the Cabinet Makers Association in 1998 and was its first executive director. Today, as editorial director of Woodworking Network and FDMC magazine he has more than 20 years experience covering the professional woodworking industry. His popular "In the Shop" tool reviews and videos appear monthly in FDMC

(Written by Will Sampson, published by Woodworking Network, April 2025)

We’ve all heard it over and over again. Manufacturing is going away. There are no manufacturing jobs anymore. The U.S. is no longer a leader in manufacturing. Everything is made overseas now.

But it’s all wrong.

First of all, we have to agree on what we are measuring and how. Yes, there are fewer manufacturing jobs (4.7 million fewer manufacturing jobs since 2000, according to one government report). Yes, manufacturing’s share of the U.S. Gross Domestic Product is down to 10 or 11% compared to as much as 25% in the 1950s. 

But manufacturing output in the U.S. is actually on the rise, and only China produces more manufactured goods by value than the U.S. China produces some $2 trillion in manufactured goods annually, accounting for 20% of all manufactured goods by value. Ranked number two in the world, the U.S. produces about $1.8 trillion in manufactured goods annually, accounting for 18% of all manufactured goods by value.

Number 3 is Japan ($1.06 trillion, 10%), number 4 is Germany ($0.7 trillion, 7%), and South Korea rounds out the top five at just a bit over half of Germany’s numbers ($372 billion, 4%). For you source checkers, all these numbers come from the Brookings Global Manufacturing Scorecard.

You see manufacturing is not actually declining. It’s getting more efficient. We’re making more stuff with fewer people (hence fewer manufacturing jobs). In the U.S., we’re also making more valuable goods, not cheap widgets. The goods we make dominate high-priced sectors such as heavy machinery, aerospace, and military goods.

​We’re also finally embracing new technologies such as robotics and high-tech automation that allow us to make even custom goods more efficiently. We’re still a bit behind the rest of the world in that measure, but we are catching up. 

Nobilia, Germany’s largest kitchen cabinet manufacturer, cranks out some 4,000 full kitchens every single day in just two manufacturing plants in Germany. That’s some 8.5 million cabinets a year. To my knowledge there is nothing like that yet in the U.S.

MasterBrand, (#6 on the FDMC 300 list of wood products manufacturers) is the biggest name in cabinets in the U.S. By one account, the company cranks out 2,315 cabinets per day at its Arthur, Illinois plant, which translates to about 770,000 cabinets a year. Of course, according to our FDMC 300 report, they have some 20 manufacturing plants, and 13,000 employees, but not all of the output is kitchen cabinets.

The point of all this is to not get lost in the doom and gloom promulgated by some media, politicians, and pundits trying to suggest we should abandon manufacturing or there is no point in competing with China, or telling our young people there is no future in manufacturing. 

We still make stuff. A lot of stuff. Valuable stuff. And more stuff than every country on the planet except one. We could be number one again if we just stopped telling ourselves we can’t compete. 

Henry Ford said it best: “Whether you think you can, or you think you can't — you're right.”