Industry That Disappeared All Its Jobs "Giving a Lift" to Economy? Unlikely!

Eh, I’m lightly losing my mind over this opening paragraph: “Factory owners have been adding jobs slowly but steadily since the beginning of the year, giving a lift to the fragile economic recovery. And because they laid off so many workers — more than two million since the end of 2007 — manufacturers now have a vast pool of people to choose from.” Setting aside that the article goes on to explain that these “factories” are not looking for floor muscle, they’re actually looking for low-end coders and analysts, and therefore just can’t find anyone to hire, can we all read those two sentences again? The industry that laid of millions… is giving a lift… to the recovery… that is not much of a recovery… because of layoffs…. So, one thing that would help is if everyone could stop looking at everything in terms of “this quarter over last”? Is a little historical context too much to ask? Here, like so! “Since early last summer, factories have cut more than one million jobs, or 5.4 percent of their payrolls, and fewer people now work in a manufacturing plant than at any time since 1964.” Oh, that’s from September 8, 2001. But surely unrelated. [Photo by TheeErin.]