Reshoring Surges As Supply Chain Snarls Live On

The U.S. is on track to reshore more industrial jobs in 2021 than any other year, including last year, which itself was a record for reshoring, according to a new report by the Reshoring Initiative.

If the second half of 2021 sees jobs reshored at the same rate as the first half, reshoring and foreign direct investment job announcements for all of 2021 will be over 220,000, or up 38% from 2020, the report says.

The organization attributes the growth to supply chain snarls caused by the coronavirus pandemic but also a push by the Biden administration to reshore jobs, which was a goal of the Trump administration as well. The reshoring trend is predicted to have an impact on the demand for U.S. industrial properties, experts say, as companies look for ways to protect their supply chains. 

“We'll start to see a shift of reshoring for medical, defense-related manufacturing," CBRE Senior Vice President Jackie Orcutt told Bisnow. "The technology market with semiconductor manufacturing and battery manufacturing is probably going to take a shift to the U.S."

The top industrial sectors reshoring jobs in 2021 include transportation equipment, chemicals, and computer and electronic parts, Reshoring Initiative reports. Other important reshoring industries are medical equipment, electrical equipment and other machinery.

"We believe that the rate of jobs coming from China is largely underreported in our data," the report says. "This is because much of the new essential product production is ... 'automatic reshoring' — where domestic production is replacing imports in cases where a high percentage of the product has traditionally been imported. In many of these cases, the work is displaced from China."

So far this year, Ohio, Arizona and Tennessee have seen the most job announcements due to reshoring and direct foreign investment, the report says. Texas has dropped from second in 2020 to 13th this year, while South Carolina dropped from first to 11th.