These might help explain a few things:

Will Blog for Food


econointersect


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Now, to be fair, not all the employment decline was due to increased employment overseas. Trade deficits remained fairly benign by 21st century standards. Employment declined significantly because of productivity improvements as more and more automation replaced manual labor. However, some of the decline was undoubtedly due to increased importation of goods to the U.S.
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Employment in manufacturing has declined everywhere.



In the United States (the red line), manufacturing as a share of total employment has fallen 15.5 percentage points in recent decades, from 26.4 percent of jobs in 1970 to 10.9 percent in 2008. In some other countries the decline has been even steeper. In Britain, for example, the share of employment held by manufacturing has fallen 21.9 percentage points in the last few decades, from 33.9 percent in 1971 to 12 percent in 2008.

There are several generally accepted explanations for these trends. They include productivity growth and new technologies and the rise of the service-sector economy...

http://economix.blogs.nytimes.com/2009/11/16/manufacturing-around-the-world