WARREN, Michigan — There are fewer manufacturing jobs in the United States and in Michigan today than when President Donald Trump took office more than a year ago and promised a resurgence for the sector with his aggressive tariffs and other trade policies.

But U.S. Trade Representative Jamieson Greer said during a tour of a Warren factory on Thursday that several metrics indicate sustained manufacturing job growth should be around the corner — including higher productivity, wages and overtime.

"And finally, in February, we saw the manufacturing jobs number go positive — really the first time — so all the indicators are in the right direction," Greer said after a tour of Atomic Industries, a startup that uses artificial intelligence and other automation tools to make molds and other parts for that are used in manufacturing processes.

Total manufacturing employment in the United States slid downward throughout last year, though it bounced upward slightly in the first three months of this year. Still, the provisional March figure of close to 12.6 million manufacturing jobs is about 75,000 jobs lower than a year ago.

Michigan manufacturing employment also slipped by several thousand jobs through last year — including in its marquee auto sector. The downward trend extends back to 2023.

"You can't change everything on a dime, but we've done a lot in a year, now that that manufacturing job number that was negative back in the Biden years and in the first part of this administration has now gone positive," he said in response to a question from The Detroit News. "And it's because everything else has gone up. When you see the manufacturing productivity go up, the wages go up, the overtime hours go up, at some point, the companies just have to hire new people."

The Atomic Industries stop was the first of three manufacturing-centric plant tours for Greer in Michigan on Thursday. He continued on to the Stellantis Warren Truck Assembly Plant, and later a drone maker in Auburn Hills. On Friday he is scheduled to tour solar panel and appliance manufacturing facilities in Ohio.

Manufacturing makes up about 10% of the U.S. economy, he said, which is far lower than many other economic powerhouses around the world. The Trump administration's strategy is to force more manufacturers to locate here in large part so they can avoid paying tariffs on imports. But the results, as the job numbers show, haven't materialized right away.

Aaron Slodov, the CEO and co-founder of Atomic, which employs 65 people and recently opened a second facility that does injection molding, said the firm has seen some uptick in demand that stretches back before Trump's second term as large manufacturers increasingly look to source components closer to their U.S. facilities, rather than importing them from abroad. As for tariffs, he said the higher rates haven't impacted his company much — at least not yet.

"If we bought a ton of machines right now, we'd see like a 15% tariff on those, but we haven't gotten to that scale," he said.

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