Ever since American manufacturing entered a long stretch of automation and outsourcing in the late 1970s, every recession has led to the loss of factory jobs that never returned. But the recovery from the pandemic recession has been different: American manufacturers have now added enough jobs to regain all that they shed — and then some.
American manufacturers cut roughly 1.36 million jobs from February to April of 2020, as Covid-19 shut down much of the economy. As of August this year, manufacturers had added back about 1.43 million jobs, a net gain of 67,000 workers above prepandemic levels.
Treasury Secretary Janet L. Yellen said that the recovery of manufacturing jobs was a result of the unique nature of the recession, which was induced by the pandemic, and the robust federal response, including legislation like the $1.9 trillion American Rescue Plan of 2021.
American manufacturers, like many industries, have struggled to find raw materials, component parts and skilled workers. And yet, they have continued to create jobs at a rate that has surprised even some longtime promoters of American factory employment.
In recessions over the last half century, factories have typically laid off a greater share of workers than other employers in the economy, and they have been slower to add jobs back in recoveries. Often, companies have used those economic inflection points to accelerate their pace of outsourcing jobs to foreign countries, where wages are significantly lower, and to invest in technology that replaces human workers.
Manufacturing jobs quickly rebounded in the spring of 2020, then began to climb at a much faster pace than has been typical for factory job creation in recent decades. Since June 2020, under both Mr. Trump and Mr. Biden, factories have added more than 30,000 jobs a month.
Sectors that hemorrhaged employment in recent recessions have fared much better in this recovery. Furniture makers, who eliminated a third of their jobs in the 2008 financial crisis and its aftermath, have nearly returned to their prepandemic employment levels. So have textile mills, paper products companies and computer equipment makers.
Manufacturers say the numbers could be even stronger, if not for their continued difficulties attracting and hiring skilled workers amid 3.7 percent unemployment.
Businesses are also beginning to question the wisdom of producing so many goods in China, amid rising tensions between Washington and Beijing over trade and technology. The Chinese government’s insistence on a zero-Covid policy, despite the severe disruptions it has caused for the economy, has especially shaken many executives’ confidence in their ability to operate in China.
But while growth in the U.S. manufacturing sector was strong last year, so were imports of manufactured goods. That suggests that the growth of manufacturing probably reflects strong consumer demand in the United States through the pandemic, rather than a shift to production in the United States.
The director of the National Economic Council said “One of the most striking things that we are seeing now is the number of companies — U.S. companies and global companies — that are committing to build and expand their manufacturing footprint in the United States, and doing so based on their view that not only did the pandemic highlight the need for more resilience in their supply chains, but that the United States is creating a policy environment that makes long term investment here in the United States more attractive.”

Neither the Shares nor the Deposit Accounts and the British Pounds Sterling deposited in them are deposits insured against loss by the FDIC, any other federal agency of the United States or the Financial Services Compensation Scheme of England

I'm wondering if the employment/unemployment picture is becoming fragmented. There are many reports of large layoffs in businesses and financial operations which are large-scale operations. But, as Crash mentions, not so much in smaller local businesses, largely retail, restaurant, and other "service" type jobs.
I'm guessing that the overall employment picture may be more complex than is generally being reported. It may be that the reporting mechanisms were not designed to accurately reflect the situation that we have right now, and therefore don't give us sufficient granularity.

Only Class D Shares (the “Shares”) are offered by this Prospectus. The Shares are offered directly through the Janus Henderson funds to eligible investors by calling 1-800-525-3713 or at janushenderson.com/individual. The Shares are not offered through financial intermediaries.

I'm curious regarding investors who buy directly from fund families in 2022 like this one: How much does security concern you? How do you feel about sharing your social security number and birth date with yet another financial institution and entrusting your assets with them? Do you worry about the institution getting hacked or that there could be internal security risks?

.Fan’s descent into forced labor began, as human trafficking often does, with what seemed like a bona fide opportunity. He had been a prep cook at his sister’s restaurant in China’s Fujian province until it closed, then he delivered meals for an app-based service. In March 2021, Fan was offered a marketing position with what purported to be a well-known food delivery company in Cambodia. The proposed salary, $1,000 a month, was enticing by local standards, and the company offered to fly him in. Fan was so excited that he told his older brother, who already worked in Cambodia, about the opportunity. Fan’s brother quit his job and joined him. By the time they realized the offer was a sham, it was too late. Their new bosses wouldn’t let them leave the compound where they had been put to work.
Unlike the countless people trafficked before them who were forced to perform sex work or labor for commercial shrimping operations, the two brothers ended up in a new occupation for trafficking victims: playing roles in financial scams that have swindled people across the globe, including in the United States.
Tens of thousands of people from China, Taiwan, Thailand, Vietnam and elsewhere in the region have been similarly tricked. Phony job ads lure them into working in Cambodia, Laos and Myanmar, where Chinese criminal syndicates have set up cyberfraud operations …..
….About 8,000 miles from Cambodia, an American who lives near San Francisco got a WhatsApp message on Oct. 7, 2021, from a stranger calling herself Jessica. She seemed to have reached him by mistake. Jessica asked the man, whose middle name is Yuen, if they knew each other; she said she had found his number on her phone and didn’t know why. Yuen responded that he didn’t know her. But Jessica was chatty and friendly, and her photo was alluring, so they kept talking….
At the moment Jessica initiated contact, Yuen was vulnerable. His father was in a hospital, dying from a lung disease. He had entrusted Yuen, the youngest of four siblings, with the power to decide whether to cut off his life support. It would also be up to Yuen to plan his father’s funeral and distribute his estate.
The family had immigrated to the U.S. from Hong Kong decades earlier. Yuen, who is in his early 50s and works as an accountant for a major university, was more affluent than his siblings, who are all older than him. He felt it was his duty to take care of them in old age, much as he was caring for his father and had cared for his late mother. Jessica told him she admired his commitment to his family. She shared her own tale of having a grandfather in the hospital….
Yuen made it clear he couldn’t afford to lose any money. If he did, he said, he’d have to kill himself. Jessica said there was no need to worry: Uncle was never wrong. Yuen owed it to his father to seize the opportunity.
On Oct. 26, the day he had to go to the hospital to discuss his father’s end-of-life care, Yuen put money on the line for the first time. A conservative investor and lifelong saver, he’d been petrified to put even $2,000 into the brokerage. Jessica convinced him to start with $10,000 and taught him the two-step process to fund his account. First, he wired money from his bank to buy a cryptocurrency called ethereum. Then he could transfer the ethereum to a crypto wallet, whose address she provided.
Jessica insisted that using a cryptocurrency would help Yuen minimize his tax burden. He admitted he had very little idea of what he was doing….
Jessica didn’t seem to grasp what a hospice was. When Yuen explained that it was a care facility for the terminally ill, she perked up: “You need to make more money.” Jessica told him he should raise his account balance to $500,000 so he could cover the cost more easily.

A parade of prominent investors and corporate executives have made it clear that they believed the worst was yet to come for the economy and financial markets.
After hitting a low in June, the S&P 500 had rallied more than 17 percent into mid-August, before losing steam again. The sell-off this week leaves the index just 5.6 percent above the bottom reached in June, after a fall of 0.7 percent on Friday that brought its weekly losses close to 5 percent. The market has only dropped 5 percent in a week three times this year.
Yet even after the swift decline this week, some of the most powerful trading houses in the world, deploying trillions of dollars on behalf of pension funds, governments and other investors, are warning that there is more pain ahead.
“If you asked me a year ago, ‘What is the worst scenario for financial markets?’ I think things are now worse than anything we could have imagined,” said the head of Norway’s sovereign wealth fund, the largest of its kind. The fund manages money generated by Norway’s extensive oil and gas sales and has $1.4 trillion invested around the world.
Business leaders, policymakers and ordinary Americans are all grappling with the end of a decade of rock-bottom interest rates that helped propel the economy after the 2008 financial crisis, and a shift to a much-less familiar, once-in-a-generation burst of inflation. Crimped supply chains, the war in Ukraine and an emerging energy crisis are among a host of challenges that add to a level of uncertainty that some investors say they have not seen in decades.
The drop on Friday came as the stock of logistics giant FedEx cratered more than 21 percent, after it warned that its profit was being hit by weakness in Asia and Europe. FedEx said that it would cut some services, close locations and freeze hiring, becoming the latest in a string of companies that have gone public with their concerns and rattled investor confidence.
FedEx is seen as an economic bellwether because its package shipping business reflects both business and consumer demand. On Thursday the company’s chief executive predicted a “worldwide recession.”
General Electric’s chief financial officer also warned of challenges, bemoaning lingering supply chain issues that remain “tough” and “impair our ability to deliver to our customers.”
Economic worries were also evident in other corners of the financial markets: Corporate debt prices fell and oil prices notched a third straight week of losses.
Mr. Tangen, of Norway’s sovereign wealth fund, said that he did not think there was an investment area anywhere in the world likely to make money in the near future. “That’s the really depressing thing,” he said.