In the US manufacturing peaked at 26% or so in the 1950s

From BRICS are Preemies from Cherokee Gothic. The actual post is about the development status of BRICs and their likely prospects, but this is the paragraph that caught my attention.

In the UK, the percent of the labor force in manufacturing peaked at 45% in 1912. In the US it peaked at 26% or so in the 1950s. In both countries it is now below 10%. Germany peaked around 40% in 1970.

26%? I am not sure I had ever focused on how low that number was. It is a truism that we can more easily visualize a manufacturing economy than a services economy and that that vividness of visualization helps over-dramatize the role of manufacturing, but still.