The BEA’s 'real manufacturing value-added' can rise even as domestic factories close because hedonic quality adjustments and deflator choices inflate 'real' output. Modest product-quality gains can be amplified into large real-growth figures, obscuring offshoring and shrinking physical production. Policy debates anchored in this series may be misreading industrial health.
— If the most-cited manufacturing metric overstates real production, industrial policy, trade strategy, and media narratives need alternative gauges (e.g., physical volumes, gross output, trade-adjusted measures).
Tyler Cowen
2026.01.09
85% relevant
The Cowen note (75k manufacturing payroll decline) provides ground‑level evidence that complements the idea that headline, quality‑adjusted GDP manufacturing series can conceal real job and physical‑production losses; the payroll drop in transportation/electronics lends concrete support to the claim that employment and physical output may be diverging from BEA 'real' manufacturings measures.
msmash
2026.01.08
72% relevant
The article documents how rapid product‑quality and size improvements (higher resolution, larger panels) and massive scaling of glass‑substrate fabrication drove steep price falls. That is exactly the mechanism that can make headline 'real manufacturing' series hard to interpret: hedonic adjustments and quality gains can inflate 'real' output even as physical factory footprints or domestic unit production shift. The TV case supplies a concrete example to test claims in the existing idea about how statistics can obscure real industrial change.
Patrick Fitzsimmons
2025.10.03
100% relevant
The article cites BEA documentation and examples (e.g., a 25% auto 'quality' increase contributing to a much larger 'real value-added' rise) alongside the claim that 'real value-added' shows +71% since 1997 despite visible hollowing-out.
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