Manufacturing jobs in the U.S. appear to be coming back—if ever so slightly.

Several American firms, including Caterpillar, GE and Ford, have announced they’re shifting some manufacturing operations back to the United States, mainly because of increasing production and energy costs overseas.

And since January of 2010, the United States has added 520,000 manufacturing jobs, according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics. There are currently 12 million manufacturing jobs on record in the United States.

But the U.S. is clearly in catch-up mode.

A report released last year by Information Technology & Innovation Foundation (ITIF) said that manufacturing in the U.S. declined more in the last decade than it did in the Great Depression.

via cnbc.com