American manufacturing workers just had their worst month in over 6 years

American manufacturing workers had a dismal March according to Friday's jobs report.

Despite the report's overall beat with 215,000 jobs added, manufacturing jobs dropped by 29,000. As observed by New River Investments' Conor Sen, this is the largest drop in manufacturing jobs since December 2009.

Leading the way in declines was durable goods manufacturing. The subsector had a drop of 24,000 jobs. Among other manufacturing subsectors, employment in machinery production declined 7,000, primary metals sank by 3,000, and semiconductors and electronic components had a 3,000 net loss.

Manufacturing has had a tough few months, with indexes registering a contraction and the sector possibly being in recession.

We will get another reading on manufacturing later Friday, as both the ISM and Markit Manufacturing indexes are released.