The story hasn't changed much, despite the continued sentiment that "Made in the USA" is staging a big comeback. The anecdotes are nice, but the broader data just don't bear it out. Manufacturing employment over the last 12 months has essentially been flat, stuck at around 11.9 million workers since April 2012. The industry has added around 500,000 jobs since the recession ended, but that's a drop in the bucket compared with the 1.8 million manufacturing jobs lost from November 2007 through the end of 2010.

It's not just employment that's been sagging. Industrial production shrank 0.5 percent in April, according to new data from the Federal Reserve. Overall, the country is using about 77 percent of its total industrial capacity, nearly 3 percentage points below the 40-year average.

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Keywords:  U.S. manufacturing, manufacturing resurgence, growth in U.S. manufacturing, employment in U.S. manufacturing, supply chain jobs, supply chain management