What bad timing

Fran O’Sullivan writes at NZ Herald:

David Shearer, Russel Norman and Winston Peters will have an opportunity to present themselves as the “government-in-waiting” when they turn up to HamiltonJet’s premises on Monday to release the results of their parliamentary inquiry into the future of manufacturing.

What awful timing for them. On Friday the Performance of Manufacturing Index hit a ten year high, and on Monday the three parties will have to proclaim how manufacturing is in crisis and dying.

Mechanisms to deal with an “overvalued and volatile dollar” – which include making the dollar and jobs additional priorities for the Reserve Bank,

Again, what bad timing for them as the dollar has dropped by around 10% in the last few weeks.

Over a four-year period manufacturing jobs have fallen by nearly 40,000 (16.7 per cent); the number of manufacturing businesses has dropped by more than 1300 (6.1 per cent); the annual value of manufactured exports was down by 12.4 per cent; and manufacturing profits fell by 17.4 per cent.

Fran doesn’t say which four year period though. In the last four years the Household Labour Force Survey shows 255,600 manufacturing jobs in March 2009 and 246,200 jobs in March 2013 which is a decline of 9,400 – not 40,000.

Now any decline is not good, but 9,400 is one quarter the size of the 40,000 the Greens stick around.