Labor productivity growth among U.S. manufacturers is running well ahead of the non-farm economy generally. But in a detail largely overlooked in the wake of last Friday's Labor Department report of 274,000 jobs being added to payrolls overall in April was the fact that U.S. manufacturing again lost jobs.
The April toll: 6,000 jobs.
Wood products, semiconductors, furniture, food processing, beverages and tobacco products, textiles, apparel, paper and paper products, and plastics and rubber products all experienced employment declines -- mostly in the number of production workers.
