cyberhype

[Doug Henwood]

Speaking of cyberhype, I was just reading the documentation for the Fed's
industrial production indexes. They have a special category called
"computers, communications equipment, and semiconductors" - the kind of
stuff that's supposed to be dominating the economic scene these days. This
sector accounted for 5.92% of all value-added in U.S. industry
(manufacturing, mining, and electric and gas utilities) in 1992 - down from
6.56% in 1982. Computers and office equipment alone were 1.75% (vs. 2.14%
ten years earlier). From reading the papers, you'd think the numbers were
somewhere around 75%.

Doug