Free Republic

CNBC has some mixed news on the economy this morning, indicating that the American economy has not yet turned a corner. On the plus side, manufacturing rose in June, but slower than it did in May. On the negative side, the services sector — 80% of the American economy — contracted in July rather than expanded as expected: The U.S. service sector contracted in July at a faster pace than in June, according to a report released Wednesday. The Institute for Supply Management’s services index fell to 46.4 last month from 47.0 in June, below economists’ median forecast for a...

IBM is staffing up in low-cost countries. To know one's surprise two of those countries are India and China. One more country is Brazil and IBM is also taking aim at Eastern Europe. But just how much is IBM depending on these countries and for what? Eastern Europe - IBM has grown from 2,900 workers to 5,125 workers since 2003. Eastern Europe provides data centers, service skills centers and Linux development labs. The work force in Brazil has doubled since 2003 - 4,500 to 9,000 and they are providing data centers, call centers and Linux development. The Chinese work force...

I am in a foul mood. Blame the so-called service industry -- supermarket clerks, car rental companies and even those responsible for my morning cup of coffee. This service society makes the old days of smoke-belching steel plants and striking pickets outside the gates look good. The last straw was the coffee.

<p>ALBANY -- Despite having a business-friendly governor and a humming economy, New York lost more residents to other parts of the country than any other state in the last half of the 1990s, new figures from the U.S. Census Bureau show.</p>

Manufacturers Find Themselves Increasingly in the Service Sector By CLARE ANSBERRY Staff Reporter of THE WALL STREET JOURNAL PITTSBURGH -- The manufacturing sector is morphing into the service sector, at great reward and risk to the economy. In recent years, manufacturers have so greatly improved productivity that companies need fewer people to actually produce goods. Many other production jobs, especially low-skill ones, have been shipped to lower-cost countries. The result has been painfully clear to workers: Those type of manufacturing jobs are fast disappearing. But what isn't so well understood is this: Of the workers still employed by manufacturing companies,...