mr. strauss, welcome. we look forward to your testimony. -- mr. strauss, welcome. >> chairman brown and members of the economic policy subcommittee, i am pleased to share with you some perspective on long-term trends and observations on how the recent recession and recovery are expecting -- affecting manufacturing. one major issues the extent to which we should be focusing on the number of people employed in this sector and the overall output. interestingly, each leads to opposite conclusion about strength of manufacturing in the united states. let's start off with employment. manufacturing employment, as a share of total employment, has been declining over the past six years. moving down from 31% in 1950, to 9% in 2009. observations on the amount of real goods projections are very different. manufacturing output in 2007 amounted to a level of over 600% higher than that in 1950. that translates into an average growth of 3.4% each year. hal is manufacturing able to produce such a surge of the past six years, but even with declining employment? the a

mr. strauss, welcome. we look forward to your testimony. -- mr. strauss, welcome. >> chairman brown and members of the economic policy subcommittee, i am pleased to share with you some perspective on long-term trends and observations on how the recent recession and recovery are expecting -- affecting manufacturing. one major issues the extent to which we should be focusing on the number of people employed in this sector and the overall output. interestingly, each leads to opposite conclusion about strength of manufacturing in the united states. let's start off with employment. manufacturing employment, as a share of total employment, has been declining over the past six years. moving down from 31% in 1950, to 9% in 2009. observations on the amount of real goods projections are very different. manufacturing output in 2007 amounted to a level of over 600% higher than that in 1950. that translates into an average growth of 3.4% each year. hal is manufacturing able to produce such a surge of the past six years, but even with declining employment? the a