The manufactured crisis is failing

March 16th, 2013 at 12:00 pm by David Farrar

How inconvenient for Labour, Greens, NZ First and Mana who have been holding their faux inquiry into the manufacturing crisis.

Stuff reports:

The manufacturing sector is expanding at its best rate for a year, as it gets get a boost from the Canterbury rebuild and wider construction work, according to a survey.

The latest BNZ-Business New Zealand Performance of Manufacturing Index was up 1.1 points  to 56.3 points in February.

A figure above 50 indicates that the sector is generally expanding and under 50 that it is going backwards.

The latest figure was the highest reading since February 2012.

BNZ senior economist Craig Ebert said the result reinforced the bank’s view that manufacturing was not “in crisis”.

 ”The figures speak for themselves. The way some people are talking, we should be witnessing a very weak, to plunging, PMI. In fact, it’s improved to a more positive level,” he said.

A funny sort of crisis.

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Grant on Manufacturing

February 10th, 2013 at 10:00 am by David Farrar

Damien Grant writes in the HoS:

David Shearer and his cohort of prospective coalition partners, the Greens, Mana and NZ First, are holding a show-trial into who killed the manufacturing industry.

Forty thousand manufacturing jobs have disappeared, Shearer declares.

What he does not say is those 40,000 jobs have gone since a peak right before the 2008 recession and almost half of that loss occurred in the final year of the last Labour government.

But if Shearer and his band of the grumpy and frumpy were to take the time to read the Department of Statistics September 2012 Economic Survey on Manufacturing, they would learn that total sales in the sector have been static.

Falling from a high of $24 billion in 2008, it is now sitting at $23 billion, measured in 2010 dollars.

The industry has become more productive; jobs have gone, but sales have not.

A good point.

Shearer is known to enjoy the surf, so he will understand it is best to ride the waves – not try to turn them back.

Manufacturing jobs that have gone are not coming back and there is nothing he, Graeme Wheeler or King Canute can do about it.

As well as his plan to build slums for the urban poor in areas where there will never be any employment – manufacturing or otherwise – he is granting a platform for the vested interests of the likes of the Manufacturers Association to cry about the exchange rate.

It is worth noting that the MEA represents relatively few manufacturers. Business NZ has a far higher proportion of manufacturers in their membership.

Manufacturing jobs have been killed because the economic tide has moved.

Shearer knows it, or should know it.

He may be king one day and if he is telling us he can control the tides of economic change, then he is going to look pretty silly on the beach after the next election.

Grant points out we also have fewer typists and lighthouse keepers than we used to!

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Is the manufacturing crisis manufactured?

February 5th, 2013 at 4:29 pm by David Farrar

Labour, Greens, NZ First and Mana have their faux inquiry into the “manufacturing crisis”. It seems someone may have forgotten to tell the manufacturers.

Rob Hosking reports at NBR:

Manufacturing improvement dominates job market data

And in the story:

On an annual basis, average ordinary time hourly earnings rose 2.6% for the year, with the largest increase in manufacturing, up 2.9%, while retail trade rose 2.7%.

And:

On a weekly basis, the income improvement is even more pronounced. Average ordinary time weekly earnings rose 2.9% for the year, or about $29 a week.

Manufacturing ordinary time weekly earnings rose 4.1% for the year.

How inconvenient for the crisis.

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Posted in NZ Politics | 60 Comments »