Justin Fox, Columnist

Friends Don't Let Friends Calculate Shares of Real GDP

A problematic method of measurement has been leading our understanding of manufacturing astray.

March 12, 2018 at 11:00 AM UTC

Justin Fox is a Bloomberg Opinion columnist covering business, economics and other topics involving charts. A former editorial director of the Harvard Business Review, he is author of “The Myth of the Rational Market.”

Don't do it.
Photographer: Chris Ratcliffe/Bloomberg

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Here's a striking chart, from a 2014 Journal of Economic Perspectives article 1520464250646 by Brookings Institution economists Martin Neil Baily and Barry P. Bosworth on the state of manufacturing in the U.S.:

What this seems to show is that while manufacturing has shed jobs, its importance to the U.S. economy is undiminished. The contrast is remarkable, and the chart makes it quite clear.