Reshoring up in 2020

Despite COVID, reshoring is up in 2020 and by year’s end total numbers should top more than a million jobs coming back to the U.S. in the last decade, according to a new report from the Reshoring Initiative.

Job announcements for 2020 are projected to reach 110,000, which will bring the total since 2010 to over 1 million by year’s end.

In fact, in 2020, reshoring is exceeding foreign direct investment (FDI) in job creation. The report states that reshoring will continue to be key to manufacturing growth and to U.S. economic recovery in 2021 and beyond.

From 2010 through  2019 more than 900,000 reshoring and FDI manufacturing jobs have been announced. Allowing for a conservative two-year lag, over 600,000 will have been hired. This figure accounts for 44% of the 1.41 million increase in U.S. manufacturing jobs since the manufacturing employment low in 2010, and 5% of total 12/31/19 manufacturing employment of 12.9 million.

The 2019 combined reshoring and FDI announcements totaled more than 117,000 manufacturing jobs, the third highest pre-revision annual rate on record. Additionally, the number of companies reporting new reshoring and FDI in 2019 was at the second highest annual level in history, 1,100 companies. The numbers demonstrate that reshoring and FDI are major contributing factors to the country’s rebounding manufacturing sector.

The Reshoring Initiative’s 1H2020 Data Report contains data on U.S. reshoring and FDI by companies that have shifted production or sourcing from offshore to the United States.

Other key highlights from the report, include:

• In 2020, U.S. reshoring outpaced FDI for the first time since 2014. COVID uncertainty is causing companies to emphasize operations in their home countries.
• The national demand to shorten and close supply chain gaps for essential products to make the U.S. less vulnerable is most likely to benefit the following industries: PPE, medical, tech, and defense. Already, 60% of cases after March 2020 mention the pandemic as a factor in reshoring decisions.
• Going forward, we believe President Biden will prioritize reshoring, but apply different methods than President Trump.

“We publish this data annually to show companies that their peers are successfully reshoring and that they should reevaluate their sourcing and siting decisions,” said Harry Moser, founder and president of the Reshoring Initiative. “With 5 million manufacturing jobs still offshore, as measured by our $800 billion/year goods trade deficit, there is potential for much more growth. We call on the administration and Congress to enact policy changes to make the United States competitive again.”

For more information on the report or the Initiative, visit www.reshorenow.org.