Don’t look now, but profits, hiring and pay packages are booming in the manufacturing sector.

In the first half of last year, the manufacturing employment and production numbers were lame – and many rightly or wrongly blamed the Trump tariffs.

But since the summer of 2025 we’ve seen a dramatic reversal of fortune for factory production.

Profits are genuinely booming for manufacturers.

The second quarter saw a 22% increase of $64.2 billion and an eye-popping 67% increase of $143.8 billion from the second quarter last year.

Census Bureau data show that profits were trending down under Biden and recovered sharply when Trump came back, accelerating since the passage of the Big Beautiful Tax Bill that made business expensing and other key tax provisions retroactive to the beginning of 2025 and permanent moving forward.

Then look at the trend in hard hat hiring: