cyberhype

[sokol at jhu.edu]

At 12:51 PM 2/18/99 -0500, Doug Henwood wrote:
>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%.

The addedd value of hardware manufacturing in the US might be low because
most hardware is simply assembled here, but manufactured offshore (the
value of the imported components thus does not enter the industry's value
added in the US).  

But that notwithstanding, the point is well taken.

Wojtek