In good times and bad, job losses have been a fact of life in the manufacturing sector for well over a decade. No region has escaped the seemingly inexorable decline. Since the mid-1990s, the Southeast alone has lost nearly 1.7 million manufacturing jobs. Largely because of the importance of automotive and machinery manufacturing in the Southeast and Great Lakes states, those regions have borne the brunt of the job losses that characterized the Great Recession. The Northeast, which experienced an employment decline at least as severe as that of the Southeast in percentage terms, was more significantly affected by the 2000-2002 manufacturing recession.