I don't think conclusion matches what we're seeing, though. Real output being flat while population and consumption have massively increased means that much more of our consumed products are being manufactured abroad now. It's not just automation at work. The original article even talks about that, where it mentions how high tech manufacturing is shrinking as a percentage of the economy.

It might well be true that we're never going to see the kind of employment in manufacturing that we used to, but a blanket "the jobs are not coming back" attitude doesn't match the data either.