🧑‍🏭 Bringing Back Jobs No One Wants

America's Love Affair With an 'Honest Day's Work' is at Odds with Reality, Plus — Why Cybersecurity, Data, and AI Stocks Could Become the Next Mag 7

Author

Katie Perry
April 17, 2025

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The Big Story: Manufacturing for Thee, But Not for Me

America loves the idea of making things again. Politicians talk about it. Voters say they want it. We wear “Made in the USA 🇺🇸” like a badge of pride. But there’s a strange truth behind this national push to bring back manufacturing: most Americans don’t actually want to work in factories.

But let’s rewind. America’s identity was rooted in agrarian ideals. The farmer, the craftsman, the “self-made man” weren’t just job titles; they were cultural archetypes. Working with your hands was seen as honorable. Building something tangible, whether a home or a business, was the American Dream in action. 

Then came the postwar boom. In the 1950s and 1960s, about one in three jobs in the U.S. were in manufacturing. By 1979, factory employment hit its peak at roughly 20 million jobs. Then, things started to fall apart. Global competition, offshoring, and automation started chipping away at the base. Between 2000 and 2010 alone, the U.S. lost nearly a third of its manufacturing jobs — that’s 5 to 6 million roles (poof!) gone as production moved overseas. By 2019, only 8% of Americans worked in factories, just a third of what it was in 1950.

As America became more affluent, we shifted into a service economy. Tech, healthcare, education, and finance grew while factories disappeared. GDP kept climbing, as did stock prices. Yay!

But something got lost. For the left, it was unions and economic fairness. For the right, national strength and tradition. You see, both sides idealize the blue-collar worker as a symbol of a better America. But, as is the case with so many economic issues, the two sides agree on the end outcome but not the way forward.

Nostalgia is a helluva drug, and as Don Draper famously said, it is “far more powerful than memory alone.” In 2025, 80% of Americans say we need more factory jobs. They see it as patriotic, practical, even essential. And they’re not wrong. Post-COVID supply chain shocks made our dependency on overseas production abundantly clear. 

Let’s get back to the original paradox I laid out: while people love the idea of manufacturing in concept, only 25% would actually take a factory job themselves. Manufacturing for thee, but not (necessarily) for me, as our friend Ramp Capital put it so perfectly on X.

There are plenty of reasons for the disconnect. For one, modern factory work ain’t what it used to be. Wages have stagnated compared to other sectors. Many jobs are non-union, outsourced, or contractor-based, which means fewer benefits and less security. The prestige once tied to working with your hands has become a stigma over time, unlike in countries like Germany or Japan, where trades are still highly respected.

Moreover, automation has fundamentally reshaped the labor equation. Robots don’t strike. They don’t get injured. And they certainly don’t ask for health insurance.

Despite being the tech powerhouse of the world, the U.S. lags behind other industrial powers in automation. As of 2023, there were 295 industrial robots per 10,000 U.S. factory workers. South Korea had more than 1,000. China, long seen as labor-rich, now has 470 and climbing. As one expert puts it, we’re “trying to bring back jobs that China doesn’t even want.”

So, we want to bring manufacturing jobs back to the U.S., but this is (rather ironically) tied to our ability to improve our automation, which — of course — replaces the very jobs we were after in the first place.

Why? Without automation, domestic labor costs would be too high to compete globally. It might just be the one thing that can put us on equal footing with countries that frankly do not give a flying … well, you know ... about wages and worker wellbeing.

Automation levels the playing field, but it doesn’t bring back those same jobs. That’s the trade-off: You can build a sleek new EV battery plant in Ohio, but it might only employ a few hundred people, not thousands. And even then, the hiring pool is thin. In mid-2024, there were still 500,000 to 600,000 unfilled manufacturing jobs in the U.S, according to the Cato Institute.

Where does this leave us? We want to feel like a nation of builders again, but most of us don’t want to be the ones actually building. Some of us don’t want immigrants to fill the labor gap. And most of us don’t want to outsource it to robots.

We’re at a messy intersection where nostalgia is meeting reality. Economists far smarter than me argue that if we’re serious about rebuilding manufacturing, we need to get real. It’s not going to look like 1955. Making America “great” again looks nothing like our past. In fact, it’s more like clean rooms, robotic arms, and fewer people on the floor, as effed up and dystopian as that may sound.

Bottom line: the idea of reshoring has support. Now it’s time to reimagine what manufacturing means in the world we actually live in.

Daily Rip Live Recap: Software as a National Security Imperative & Figma’s IPO Aspirations

Watch us every weekday, M-Th at 9 AM ET on YouTube, X, and in the Stocktwits app.

Every weekday, Shay Boloor and I run down the biggest market news and events LIVE on Stocktwits’ morning show, The Daily Rip Live. With a bit of a lull from frenetic White House tweets, posts, and announcements, we finally had some airtime to cover upcoming earnings and sector trends. Relief!

Here’s what we covered:

  • 2:20 | Bad news bears for Nvidia, which these days seems to be carrying tech on its back. They announced a $5B hit tied to licensing their H20 product to China, sending the stock falling. $NVDA ( â–˛ 4.3% )  

  • 7:25 | We’re in a “new age of defense," with specific tech and software rapidly becoming national security imperatives. Modern war won’t be fought on battlefields — and could happen in ways we don’t always see. $CRWD ( â–˛ 2.62% )  $PLTR ( â–˛ 4.64% )  $AXON ( â–˛ 2.22% )  

  • 10:45 | Tech’s deglobalization pivot — a few years back, we talked about how big tech players were morphing into nation-states. But nobody cares about the metaverse anymore, and physical borders matter more than ever. $META ( â–˛ 2.65% )  

  • 16:00 | March retail sales data is in and in line with expectations. Looking at the data, it’s plausible that there was pull-forward spending in some categories, like cars.

  • 22:40 | United Airlines provided a guidance range that laid out multiple scenarios, which isn’t super conventional. My co-host Shay believes this could be a risky gambit — imagine missing your “worst case scenario!” $UAL ( â–Ľ 1.23% )  

  • 28:15 | I am listening to what execs say (and don't) this earnings cycle, especially when it comes to their assessment of the state of the economy.. This is especially true for people I see as ballers of the business world, like Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella. We’ll hear from him on their Q1 earnings call next week. $MSFT ( â–˛ 1.18% )  

  • 33:50 | The beloved company Figma confidentially filed an S-1 amid a tepid IPO market. We discussed Figma’s strength of brand and community; they are well-known for empowering designers in the AI area. | Watch the clip $ADBE ( â–˛ 1.89% )  

  • 40:30 | Tech bright spots are lining up with national security themes: cybersecurity, and builders at the intersection of AI and defense. $NET ( â–˛ 1.79% )  $SNOW ( â–Ľ 0.16% ) were up on Wednesday, in addition to Palantir and Crowdstrike, whereas other tech players dropped.

  • 51:30 | Robots for public safety? We also talked about the use of robotics in jobs requiring physical labor (nurses, construction). I interviewed KULR Technologies’ CEO about their new exoskeletons, which you can watch here. $KULR ( â–˛ 2.27% )  $KSCP ( â–Ľ 5.3% )  

Hear Shay and me yap about the markets every weekday at 9 a.m. ET on X (@stocktwits), YouTube, LinkedIn, or in your Stocktwits app. Follow me there — I’m @stocktwitsKP!

Now Here’s a Chart

I feel like with all the tariff drama going down and Elon Musk winding down his duties in DC (amid calling Navarro a “moron”), we haven’t seen a lot of headlines from the DOGE gang. Axios just put out an interesting visualization that shows the concentration of federal workers per capita at the state level.

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Tuesday Thursday Saturday is written by Katie Perry, owner of Ursa Major Media, which provides fractional marketing services and strategy in software, tech, consumer products, professional services, and other industries. She is also the co-host of Stocktwits’ Daily Rip Live show.

Disclaimer: The contents here reflect recaps and summaries of pre-reported or published data, news, and trends. I have cited sources and context for the information provided to the best of my ability. The purpose of the newsletter is to inform and educate on larger trends shaping business and culture — this is NOT investment advice. As an investor, you should always do your own research before making any decisions about your money or your portfolio.