Most U.S. Manufacturing Jobs Gone for Good

he day after the State of the Union Address, President Obama visited a Phoenix suburb to tour Intel’s still-under-construction computer chip manufacturing plant. Its price tag – $5.2 billion – making it the largest construction project in the world outside this summer’s London Olympics. When the plant opens in 2013, it will employ about 1,000 workers, a welcome boost for a state and nation hungry for new manufacturing jobs.  The president’s tour, overshadowed in the media by a pseudo-confrontation with Gov. Jan Brewer on the Phoenix airport tarmac, was designed to highlight his manufacturing jobs agenda.