Insourcing Trend Appears Oversold

Bloomberg:

Randy Webb sees scant evidence of a U.S. manufacturing rebound in the Ohio plant where he’s fixed aircraft electronics for 25 years. Honeywell International Inc. (HON) is closing the shop in 2014 as it expands such work overseas.
Webb is among 80 employees poised to lose their jobs in Strongsville, Ohio, outside Cleveland, near where General Electric Co. (GE) will shut a lighting factory in favor of production in Hungary. Delphi Automotive Plc (DLPH) is sending parts assembly to Mexico from Flint, Michigan, and Eaton Corp. (ETN) will make extra-large hydraulic cylinders in the Netherlands, not Alabama...
The U.S. industrial comeback, an idea embraced by President Barack Obama and some economists as 12 years of factory-job losses gave way to three annual gains, is now sputtering. Even with nonfarm payrolls up 1.1 percent in 2013 to 136.1 million, manufacturing has stagnated at less than 12 million. Factories added more than 500,000 positions after falling in February 2010 to the lowest since 1941.
That left the factory workforce through August about 13 percent smaller than the 13.7 million when the U.S. fell into recession in December 2007. In 2000, the tally was 17 million... One discouraging sign that manufacturing employment is recovering: the 13 percent gap between factory payrolls now and before the recession occurred amid a rebound in output, said Tim Quinlan, a Wells Fargo & Co. economist in Charlotte, North Carolina. Industrial production trails a 2007 pre-recession high by only 1.9 percentage points.

The story earlier in the year about GE's Appliance Park made me a little hopeful, but alas, it may have been a bit oversold.  The other thing hurting manufacturing job creation is investment in labor saving technology.  It will be interesting to see if the supposed shale gas manufacturing bonanza occurs.  I'd bet it is decently oversold.