Despite a brutal recession and stiff Asian competition, it's way too soon to write an obituary for U.S. manufacturing.

Just ask Robert Freund, who was able to rehire some laid-off workers this year at Checker Bag in Overland. Or Robert Griggs, whose Trinity Products in St. Charles invested $650,000 in new equipment during the deepest part of the recession.

That's not to minimize the damage: Industrial production and employment both have fallen by about 15 percent since the end of 2007. Of roughly 7 million U.S. jobs lost during the recession, 2 million are in manufacturing. In the St. Louis area, hit hard by the closing of two Chrysler plants, 19,000 manufacturing jobs have disappeared.

What's more, many of those jobs will never return. The National Association of Manufacturers estimates that even after five years of economic growth, fewer than half of the lost jobs will be regained.

That feeds into the death-of-manufacturing story line that we hear all too often. The usual refrain is that Asia, and especially China, is becoming the world's workshop, leaving the U.S. with a bunch of hollowed-out factories.

Jobs, though, aren't the right way to measure manufacturing. In terms of manufacturing output, the U.S. still leads the world with a market share of about 22 percent, and that has been steady for three decades. The long-term employment decline happens for two reasons: Our factories have become more automated, and we have replaced labor-intensive, low-value-added industries with higher-tech ones.

NAM President John Engler, who is visiting factories in St. Louis this week, describes the recession's effect this way: "It's kind of like the Yankees having a losing season. We're still the world's leading manufacturing economy. All the other nations would love to trade places with us."

Both Freund, who makes plastic bags priced in pennies, and Griggs, whose plant turns out steel pipe as big as 54 inches in diameter, say unabashedly that they're able to compete — and make money — as domestic manufacturers. So does Steve Schulte, whose Porta-King Building Products in Earth City was part of Engler's tour.

Porta-King makes modular office systems that are installed inside factories and warehouses. It also makes security structures, from simple parking lot huts to armored guard towers for military bases.

The recession has hit the office systems business hard, Schulte said, but security products have kept the company in the black. Porta-King, which has its largest factory in Montgomery City, Mo., has cut about 60 jobs from its peak employment of 160.

Schulte hopes to rehire those workers next year, but he isn't surprised by predictions that manufacturing won't bounce back quickly. "People are going to be really wary about adding anything until they are convinced that the recovery is real," he says.

Engler says he wants Americans to stop agonizing over what's been lost, including thousands of automotive jobs in his home state of Michigan, and focus instead on what manufacturers need to be competitive in the future.

In Washington, he is trying to promote a growth agenda that includes infrastructure spending, an improved educational system and ratification of stalled free-trade agreements with South Korea, Colombia and Panama. That message is hard to get across, Engler says, in a Congress that is preoccupied with health care and climate change.

Congress, at some level, takes its cue from the American people. That's why it's so important to get out the message that manufacturing, though wounded, is alive and well and still part of this country's future.