Goal: More U.S. Manufacturing Jobs

When General Electric (GE) Chief Executive Jeffrey Immelt delivered a speech at the Detroit Economic Club in June, he sounded more like a Midwestern governor than the leader of a $143 billion company whose ultimate responsibility is to his shareholders.

"We should set a goal…to have manufacturing jobs be no less than 20% of total employment, about twice what it is today," Immelt said. "This is a national imperative." According to Susan Helper, chair of the economics department at Case Western Reserve University's Weatherhead School of Management, the speech turned heads. "GE had been a leader of offshoring, saying it was just too expensive to manufacture in the U.S., so to hear Immelt arguing that we need to rebuild our industrial base is significant," she says

Read the full article By Jessie Scanlon at Business Week.