Ed Huntress wrote:


At the end of 1998, the US employment stats looked like this (in thousands):

Manufacturing: 18,587
Retail trade: 22,650

As of the 2nd quarter of 2003, they looked like this:

Manufacturing: 14,741
Retail trade: 14,979

Interesting. That's a 20.69% drop for manufacturing and a 33.86% drop
for retail.

I hear in the news all the time how badly manufacturing has been hurt,
but it looks like retail is taking a much bigger beating. That looks
like it at least somewhat supports the generalization that every
manufacturing job supports several retail/service jobs.

Jon