The decline of high-tech manufacturing in the United States

High-tech manufacturing used to employ 2.8% of U.S. workers back in 1990. Now it’s down to 1.3%. The sharpest losses hit computers, electronics, and aerospace—industries that once defined the future.

Only pharma and med devices managed to buck the trend, adding 189,000 jobs while the rest bled over a million.

System shift: Hardware is cooling off. Biotech’s heating up. Engineering talent and industrial priorities are quietly reorganizing around molecules instead of microchips.