Manufacturing PMI Just Hit a 4-Year High. Outside COVID, Factory Job Cuts Are the Worst Since 2009.

America is building more factories than ever — and filling them with machines, not people.

Factory Spending vs. Factory Jobs

Construction Spending

Manufacturing Workers

Construction Spending (Annualized)

2019

$80B

2024

$240B

2026

$186B

Manufacturing Workers (Millions)

2019

12.8M

2024

12.9M

2026

12.6M

Spending up 133% since 2019 • Workers down 1.6%

Source: U.S. Census Bureau, BLS, June 2026

You’ve seen the reshoring headlines. Chip plants in Arizona. Battery factories in Georgia. New assembly lines in Ohio. Factory construction spending hit a record $240 billion last year — triple what we spent in 2019. Triple.

Everyone assumes more factories means more factory jobs. It didn’t.

The S&P Global manufacturing PMI came in at 55.7 for June — a four-year high. Orders are surging. Output is booming. And outside the pandemic, factory job cuts just hit their fastest pace since 2009. Not since COVID, mind you. Since the financial crisis.

America has 12.6 million manufacturing workers right now. Before COVID, we had about 12.8 million. In between, companies committed more than $1.5 trillion to building new factories. The result? Fewer workers than we started with.

CNBC hasn’t caught this yet. July 9th will.

Most investors are chasing AI software stocks.

ChatGPT. Anthropic. OpenAI.

They’re staring at the sky.

Meanwhile, a six-page Pentagon memo just mandated the most aggressive hardware deployment in military history.

Every chip must process AI without the Cloud. Off-grid. In the dark.

One company designed the architecture. They hold the patents. And they collect a royalty on every chip shipped — 80 million per day.

Apple, Microsoft, and the Pentagon are all locked in. The July 9th deadline is approaching. The hardware orders are about to become irrevocable.

You can wait for CNBC to figure it out — or you can get the name now.

Dylan Jovine has the full breakdown.

See the stock the Pentagon memo revealed >>

Chart of the Day — June 30, 2026 (Part 2)

This isn’t a failure. It’s the design. A new TSMC chip plant doesn’t look like the old Ford assembly line. One technician watching sensors replaces a dozen workers on the floor. Output per worker goes up. Headcount goes down. If you own manufacturing stocks, that productivity story is great news. If you were expecting a blue-collar jobs boom... that’s a different conversation.

The Takeaway

“America more than doubled its factory construction spending since 2019. It has 200,000 fewer factory workers. The reshoring boom is real — but the new American factory wants engineers and robots, not assembly line workers.”

Chart of the Day — June 30, 2026 (Part 3)

If you’ve got a grandson thinking about a career, tell him to learn to program the machines — not run them. That’s where the money is heading. And if you’re holding manufacturing stocks, look at per-worker productivity, not headcount. The companies winning this race are the ones that need the fewest people.

More tomorrow. Stay sharp.

— Ray Calloway

America Built a Record Number of New Factories. They Just Don't Need Workers.

Manufacturing PMI Just Hit a 4-Year High. Outside COVID, Factory Job Cuts Are the Worst Since 2009.

CNBC hasn’t caught this yet. July 9th will.

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