This surprised me, because I thought that manufacturing was one sector in the US that was seeing growth over the last two years. At least in Michigan, that has been the story. Michigan manufacturing has been on the rise, and the economy has been warming up slowly. Just an anecdote, but the other day I heard that a TV assembly plant was being built in Canton, MI. That blew my mind. I haven't heard of TV's being built in the US for a long time. At any rate, this is a good article. I wasn't aware of how productivity was determined. It seems like if you understand any statistic well enough, you know enough not to trust it. :) When a US company keeps having less and less workers in the US, yet makes bigger and bigger profits, what does that mean? What is a US company? It would be interesting if there were some 'US head count' statistic that factored into the equation. Especially when it came to tax breaks and subsidies for the company in question.