Even though more than 22 million American jobs including 1.36 million manufacturing were lost in March and April 2020, the job market has rebounded strongly, recovering all the jobs lost over the following 28 months, with manufacturing jobs surpassing previous levels, the New York Times reports.

As of the September jobs report (reflecting job growth in August), the US has created 1.43 million manufacturing jobs since April 2020, a net increase of 67,000 jobs, typically in middle-class-paying positions that don’t necessarily need a college education.  Many of these jobs are also with union-supported companies, a priority of the Biden Administration.

Perversely, the bump in manufacturing jobs could be attributed indirectly to the pandemic:  as supply chains stopped providing goods–particularly those made overseas–during the pandemic, entrepreneurs and existing companies expanded their operations to fill the gaps, manufacturing those products here in the US.

“We had a huge shift away from services and into goods that spurred production and manufacturing and very rapid recovery in the U.S. economy,” Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen said earlier this month.  Much of the manufacturing job growth can be attributed to the Biden rescue plan, Yellen, noted, which “has been tremendously helpful in restoring the health of the job market and given the shifting in spending patterns, I think that’s been to the benefit of manufacturing.”