The China Deal: If You Can't Sell It, Buy It

[Tom Lehman]

That's a rough guage of  productivity in the manufacturing sector in terms
of dollars and cents. What's the game---lower productivity?  Has the
manufacturing sector productivity been max'd out?  Is that the worry.  Not
happy with the profits or prospects here, move to Mexico or even better
China.

Doug Henwood wrote:


> Michael Perelman wrote:
>
> >Interesting.  You said that employment as not decreased all that much,
> >so then value added per manufacturing worker has not been increasing
> >much.  Is that correct?
>
> Flattish employment plus a 32% increase in real value-added seems a
> bit more than "not much."
>
> Here are some more numbers.
>
>                    value-       full-time       VA/
>                     added       equiv wkrs      FTE
>                   1992$mill      (thous)       1992$
>           1987    1,041,675       18,594       56,022
>           1988    1,111,013       18,943       58,650
>           1989    1,105,992       18,992       58,235
>           1990    1,089,974       18,615       58,554
>           1991    1,050,216       18,004       58,332
>           1992    1,063,628       17,671       60,191
>           1993    1,100,823       17,662       62,327
>           1994    1,193,167       18,013       66,239
>           1995    1,271,556       18,188       69,912
>           1996    1,293,847       18,164       71,231
>           1997    1,369,889       18,339       74,698
>
> 1987-92              -4.3%        -6.7%        +2.6%
> 1992-97             +28.8%        +3.8%       +24.1%
>
> The Bush-era recession is visible in the first half of the stats, but
> the expansion in output between 1992 and 1997 is pretty strong, as is
> the VA/worker.
>
> Fresh numbers are due in early June.
>
> Doug