Manufacturing and productivity improving in Australia

Michael Pascoe, in Manufacturing not dead, just dieting, looks at the latest RBA statistics and notes that there has been a small rise in productivity and in manufacturing jobs:

Here's a surprise: amid all the headlines about the demise of Australian manufacturing at the hands of our strong currency, militant unions, interfering governments, poor productivity and the solar eclipse, employment in the manufacturing sector actually grew in the year to the end of August.

What's more, productivity also has been improving and is now running at a bit above the average of recent years – admittedly faint praise. It still adds up to the standard liturgy chanted by the high priests of business being as dangerously outdated as the Catholic Church's celibacy and men-only rules.