Reshoring in 2026: $1.6 Trillion Announced, Jobs Still Falling — What the Data Actually Shows
By Virginia Viadas
"The largest reshoring wave in American history" — that's the official framing. The employment data tells a more complicated story. Here's what's real, what's hype, and where the jobs actually are.
The announcement boom is real
Roughly $1.595 trillion in factory commitments has been announced, and between 2010 and 2020 reshoring job announcements averaged 60,000 to 80,000 a year before the CHIPS Act changed the scale entirely. Tariffs turbocharged intent: tariff citations as a reshoring driver jumped 454% year-over-year in Q1 2025. Concrete projects are landing — Wistron ramping mass production in Dallas by late 2026, and Whirlpool's $300 million investment in its Clyde and Marion, Ohio operations projecting 450-600 new jobs.
The employment data isn't
Manufacturing employment has declined about 1% since the broad tariffs took effect, and manufactured goods output initially dropped 0.4% per Kearney's Reshoring Index, which kept the U.S. well in negative territory. Manufacturing construction spending — the leading indicator — has steadily declined since 2024, dragged by a 44% slowdown in electronics and fab construction. As one workforce official put it bluntly: there hasn't been an employment rebound in manufacturing in the first year and a half of the tariffs.
Why both are true: the timeline problem
The gap isn't failure — it's physics. Semiconductor fabs run a nine-year arc from announcement to full employment; Intel Ohio has been pushed to 2030-2031, and pharma validation runs five to seven years. Meanwhile ISM's survey chair explains the hiring hesitancy: when things are uncertain, you don't invest in capital equipment and you don't hire, because it's costly to hire and train only to lay off if the order book turns.
Where the opportunity actually is
The quality shift is the underreported story: 88% of reshored jobs in 2024 were high-tech or medium-high-tech, average manufacturing compensation hit $135,525 (+13.1%), and the single scarcest profile is the controls engineer — PLC programming, SCADA, robotics integration — with searches stretching past 60 days. For suppliers, the demand signal is clear: automation-adjacent products, services, and training are where reshored dollars land first. And per S&P Global, business optimism hit its highest since February — the demand wave is coming; it's just arriving on an industrial timeline, not a news-cycle one.
Methodology and sources
Data from FRED/BLS, Kearney Reshoring Index, Reshoring Initiative, IoT Analytics, S&P Global PMI, ISM, and company announcements. Updated July 2026.