Losing bad jobs in favor of better, higher-paying jobs is not decline.

While visiting a steel plant in Indiana in October, President Obama described the recent gains in American manufacturing employment as a reversal from previous decades when “everybody said American manufacturing is going downhill.” But has manufacturing really been going downhill? Not exactly.

News outlets including CNN, NPR and The Washington Post have also lamented the decline of U.S. manufacturing. But what do they mean by a “decline” in manufacturing?

The U.S. manufacturing sector produces more stuff almost every year than it did the year before. Prior to the 2008 recession, we manufactured more stuff in the United States than had ever been manufactured by any country, ever, in the history of the world. Is that decline?

After a slight dip from the recent recession, the United States is once again at an all-time high. We are on pace to manufacture more stuff in 2014 than we have in any year in all of U.S. history. Is that decline?

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This article is from the USA Today   Author, Thomas L. Hogan 10:34 a.m. EST December 24, 2014