The WSJ article was based on a survey of purchasing managers. Rather than surveying what people said, I looked at the number of posted jobs for manufacturing engineers and lean manufacturing experts.
There has been a steady increase in the number of jobs for these professionals over the past quarter, including in December, which is often expected to be a slow month for hiring.
I also looked at where manufacturing jobs were created in December. The picture for all manufacturing jobs is very different than the picture for manufacturing experts, as the last two bar graphs show.
Jobs for manufacturing experts are focused in traditional US manufacturing centers - Detroit, Milwaukee, Minneapolis and Chicago. When we include supply chain and logistics jobs in the mix, the Washington DC metro area jumps to the top of the list; Atlanta and Boston rank higher as well.
(This blog was reprinted from the NimbleCat blog at http://http://nimblecat.typepad.com/thecareerists.)