The U.S. is losing thousands of manufacturing jobs, analysis finds

[BumRushDaShow]

Source: CBS News

Updated on: September 9, 2025 / 1:49 PM EDT


Manufacturers in the U.S. are cutting thousands of jobs even as President Trump pushes economic policies that he says will revitalize the industry. Employers shed 12,000 manufacturing jobs in August, while payrolls in the sector have shrunk by 42,000 since April, according to a new analysis from the Center for American Progress (CAP) that draws on government labor data.

The nonpartisan policy institute attributes that decline to the Trump administration's steep new tariffs; hardline stance on immigration; and the Republican-backed "big, beautiful bill," a tax and spending package enacted by Mr. Trump in July that CAP says hurts renewable energy companies by phasing out certain tax credits.

For all of 2025, manufacturing employment in the U.S. has sunk by a total of 33,000 jobs, according to Labor Department figures. Most of those job losses have been among companies that make durable goods, such as cars, household appliances and electronics. The drop comes as hiring overall has slowed sharply in recent months, with employers adding only 22,000 jobs in August, well below forecasts.

The number of manufacturing jobs in the U.S. has declined for the past six decades, according to data from the Federal Reserve Bank of St. Louis. In 1960, manufacturing represented about 34% of total employment, while the number of jobs in the sector peaked in 1970 at 19.5 million. As of August this year, 12.7 million Americans were employed in manufacturing, while the industry lost 87,000 jobs in 2024, data shows.

Read more: https://www.cbsnews.com/news/jobs-manufacturing-trump-tariffs-economy/

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Link to Center for American Progress REPORT - Trump’s Trade War Squeezes Middle-Class Manufacturing Employment

[dweller]

1. well duh

ETTD


✌🏻

[Botany]

2. But Karoline Leavitt just said everything is dandy?

Link to tweet

[IronLionZion]

3. The myth of Republican job creation needs to end

it's one of those often repeated lies that too many just blindly accept. Their policies are objectively bad for our economy. And that's by design for the vultures who like to buy low and take advantage of desperate unemployed workers.

[AverageOldGuy]

4. History may not repeat but sometimes it certainly looks like it

Trump on the campaign trail in West Virginia, 2016: "I love coal!! I'll create a huge number of coal jobs!!" And the crowds went wild.

The reality
When he left office in January 2021, the number of coal mining jobs in the U.S. had declined by nearly 10%, falling from approximately 50,900 in January 2017 to 44,100 by December 2020.

[Aristus]

5. Well, were we really expecting ole Maw 'n' Paw Kettle up there in Squalor Holler to change what we will laughingly refer

to as their minds?

Even as they lost their black-lung jobs?

Now they're losing the medical care they were going to need for their mining-savaged health. And I'm sure they'll applaud Trump for that, as well.

Can someone remind me why we admitted West Virginia to the Union?

[heckles65]

6. Coal mining employment

dipped below 40 with the COVID recession, rose slightly to 42K in 2022, now has headed back down to 40K. Yet people in southern West Virginia keep believing the days of "they'll need 200 men down in Pit #8 Monday morning" are going to come back

[republianmushroom]

7. Somebody want to tell me how great republican

economics is ? Illegal tariff are working. Yup.