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Strategic industries

The productive core: factories, energy, infrastructure.

Manufacturing, energy, and infrastructure are the productive core of the economy. We develop the factories, industrial systems, energy assets, and enabling infrastructure that rebuild capacity and the jobs that come with it.

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By the numbers

A vast base — and a share still shrinking.

Manufacturing still employs nearly 13 million Americans, yet its share of the economy keeps sliding.

Manufacturing as a share of U.S. GDPPercent of value added

Source: U.S. Bureau of Economic Analysis, retrieved via FRED (series VAPGDPMA).

19.5M

Manufacturing’s 1979 employment peak — a level the sector has never returned to.

U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics, CES

+1.1M

Manufacturing jobs added back since the sector’s 2010 employment trough.

U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics, CES

~16%

U.S. share of global manufacturing output — second only to China.

World Bank / UN, 2023

The jobs picture

Headcount held; the trend flattened.

After rebuilding from the 2020 low, U.S. factory headcount has settled onto a plateau — steady even as the sector’s share of GDP keeps easing.

U.S. manufacturing employmentMillions of workers

Source: U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics, retrieved via FRED (series MANEMP).

03

Common questions

About manufacturing & energy.

Yes. Energy assets and the infrastructure that supports industry are part of the same productive core — factories cannot run without power, water, and logistics.

Manufacturing, energy, and infrastructure — the factories, industrial systems, energy assets, and enabling networks that together produce real output and the jobs that come with it.

Factories cannot run without power, water, and logistics, so energy assets and the infrastructure that supports industry are part of the same productive core, not a separate concern.

Factories and the industrial systems around them — production lines, shared facilities, and the supplier and workforce base that lets them operate at scale.

Both. Energy assets and the infrastructure that delivers power to industry are developed together, because a plant’s viability depends as much on reliable supply as on the generation itself.

Closely. The enabling infrastructure a factory needs — power, water, logistics — is often developed through the same corridor logic, so manufacturing and infrastructure work reinforce each other.

Manufacturers, energy and utility firms, site owners, states and regions, and sponsors — coordinated so that production, power, and the infrastructure between them advance in step.

With a factory, industrial system, energy asset, or enabling-infrastructure opportunity brought forward for review, then developed toward delivery through defined stages.

Site readiness, power and utility connections, permitting, and workforce availability. These enabling constraints often decide the schedule more than construction of the plant itself.

Coordinated development over the project’s life, framed institutionally rather than as a fee, with scope defined together as the opportunity moves through its stages.

04

Developing a manufacturing or energy project?

Bring us a factory, industrial system, energy asset, or enabling-infrastructure opportunity.

Manufacturing, Energy & Infrastructure — Applied America