"IMF Paper: No U.S. Manufacturing Renaissance"

But what about the cat videos?
From Real Time Economics:
Don’t get your hopes up for a U.S. manufacturing renaissance.

After years of lamenting the factory sector’s diminishing role in the American economy, many American firms are counting on the domestic energy boom, rising overseas labor costs and stronger domestic demand to revive the long-stagnating manufacturing sector.

But most claims about a sudden surge are overly optimistic and unwarranted, a group of International Monetary Fund economists wrote in a paper published Wednesday. 
“We find it unlikely for manufacturing to become a main engine of growth in the U.S.,” they said.

Manufacturing has become an increasingly smaller share of U.S. economy for the better part of a century. At the end of World War II, more than a third of all U.S. workers held manufacturing jobs. That figure fell below 10% in 2008 and manufacturing employment has failed to rebound to prerecession levels, according to Labor Department data....MORE

Perhaps GDP isn't the correct measure, who can put a price on felines who look like politicians:

And the economic activity unleashed by the Los Angeles International Cat Video Film Festival has to add up to something.