David Rocks and Nick Leiber of Bloomberg Businessweek reported last week on the growing trend of small U.S. manufacturers bringing their jobs back to the United States, from overseas manufacturing locations – many in China.

Manufacturers cited a variety of reasons for bringing their jobs back to the U.S.: shipping costs, logistics of dealing with a 12-hour time difference, communication issues, and having to deal with products getting caught up in customs.

One manufacturer, Jerry Anderson of LightSaver Technologies, said that manufacturing in the United States is likely 2-5% cheaper once many of the problems mentioned above are factored into the cost of production.

It’s not just Anderson who’s made this decision recently.

According to the Bloomberg article:

“An April poll of 259 U.S. contract manufacturers—which make goods for other companies—showed 40 percent of respondents benefited this year from work previously done abroad. And nearly 80 percent were optimistic about 2012 sales and profits, according to the survey by MFG.com, a website that helps companies find manufacturers.”

Manufacturing in the United States will not just benefit the company owners. As the Alliance for American Manufacturing (AAM) blog ManufactureThis reported last week, manufacturing jobs in the U.S. are critical to the entire nation’s economy.