Free Republic

An earlier column questioned recent allegations that U.S. manufacturing has suffered a long-term secular decline rather than a routine but painful cyclical recession. I received a number of critical comments, some from online bulletin boards. Many misunderstood the distinction just mentioned, between secular and cyclical trends, and nearly all the critics misunderstood the statistics. I am certainly not claiming that all manufacturing industries are now flourishing in every state. On the contrary, industrial production in August was barely 1 percent above the cyclical trough in December of 2001. But suffering for a few years during and after a recession is...

<p>Americans celebrate an uneasy Labor Day. More than 2.7 million jobs have been lost since 2001, the majority in well-paying fields, especially manufacturing.</p> <p>Months of "recovery" have failed to create many new jobs. Millions more Americans have stopped actively looking for work. Or they are underemployed, frustrated that their investment in college or technical training hasn't improved prospects.</p>