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When I saw your the Tribune Business story on the record increase in the factory index, which hit a 20-year high (Jan. 3), my first questions were, “So how can this be? How is this measured?”
Then came another story on Jan. 7 that reported “Orders to U.S. factories, after posting two months of solid increases, fell by 1.4 percent in November, the biggest decline since April.”
As one who has been in close contact with manufacturing for more than 40 years, I can tell you manufacturing is a shadow of what it was 20 years ago. This has to be another of those games played with percentages.
What is the real story? Well, here in Rockford, we’ve lost about 11,000 jobs in the last three years–jobs that are not coming back.
