Maybe it all comes down to cash or bodies. What am I talking about? Why, your business, how it’s managed, and how it is perceived, not just by you, but also by the public and government officials. All of this can mean drastically different outcomes.

Let’s step back a minute. Historically, the most crucial metric for any business is cash. How much money do you make? Gross, net, EBITDA, etc. The bean counter view. If you don’t make money, you can’t stay in business. Our annual FDMC 300 list of the biggest woodworking manufacturers is based on money in the form of annual sales.

But what about other metrics? Like people. Political pundits love to cite the decline in manufacturing jobs. According to the Bureau of Labor Statistics, the U.S. economy peaked at 19.6 million manufacturing jobs in 1979 and has been in a precipitous decline since then, hovering around 13 million in recent years with more than 100,000 manufacturing jobs lost just last year.

That sounds pretty dire, but instead of counting heads, let’s follow the money. Manufacturing output has actually increased some 80 percent since the 1980s, reaching its highest level in history in 2025, according to the Association for Manufacturing Technology.

How can there be fewer jobs and more value created? One word: productivity. Through modern technology, automation, and improved efficiency with massive adoption of lean manufacturing processes, we’re making a lot more stuff with fewer people.

For years we’ve been told that U.S. manufacturers, particularly in the furniture industry, can’t compete with China and other Asian countries because of cheap labor overseas. Big furniture companies shipped production overseas, closing factories in the U.S. But the Chinese aren’t measuring their output with bodies.

Just today I read about big car makers including Toyota, Honda, and Ford complaining that they can’t compete with China on manufacturing, not because of cheap labor, but because of automation. That’s right. While we were content to ship jobs overseas rather than invest in technology and automation at home, China continued to measure success in output, not jobs. A Honda official said he visited a Chinese car factory and didn’t see a single human on the shop floor while production proceeded apace.

So, what’s the takeaway? First off, we still make a lot of stuff here. Yes, China is the largest manufacturer in the world with 27 percent of the output, but the U.S. is not far behind, in second place with more than 17 percent. Japan and Germany are in a virtual tie for third place with just 5 percent each.

Secondly, how do you measure your output? We used to measure shop size by numbers of employees, but there are fully automated small shops that compete with much larger operations. More than a decade ago, I visited a 3-man shop with a CNC, edgebander, and forklift that was doing $5 million in annual sales. 

Cash or bodies? What will it be?