????不少美國人正在為制造業的復蘇歡呼雀躍，奧巴馬總統儼然已經成為這支啦啦隊的總隊長。他在工廠車間發表演講稱，制造業脆弱的好轉跡象理應為他贏得第二個任期。“只要我們能制造出比世界其他國家更好的東西，美國就將會展現出一派蓬勃發展的景象，”本月初，他在弗吉尼亞州一家勞斯萊斯轎車（Rolls-Royce）制造廠對聽眾們說。

????但一份最新出爐的報告稱，近期那些大肆宣揚制造業顯露復興跡象的新聞報道掩蓋了一個更加嚴峻的現實：過去10年，美國制造業遭受了一場災難性的衰退，如今的狀況要比大多數經濟學家愿意承認的狀況還要糟糕得多。

????周二，這份由技術政策智庫信息技術與創新基金會（the Information Technology & Innovation Foundation）發布的報告顯示，以創造的就業機會來衡量，制造業在過去10年的表現堪稱史上最糟，總計共裁減了570萬個就業崗位。如果按照在全部工作崗位中占據的份額來衡量，這一輪衰退甚至比制造業在大蕭條（Great Depression）期間遭受的打擊更加嚴重。

????二戰后的數次衰退中，大多數時候，制造業往往都是經濟復蘇的引領者，這個經濟部門喪失的就業機會通常都能在相對較短的時間內失而復得。但不同的是，制造業在過去10年消失的絕大多數就業機會現在依然沒有得到恢復；而在大衰退（Great Recession）期間，這一數據還不到14%。

????技術與創新基金會使用這些數據來證明，美國制造業目前正面臨結構性衰退。他們認為，各個流派的經濟學家和專家一直在粉飾太平——這些人不僅采用的錯誤數據不但低估了制造業當前面臨的挑戰之嚴重程度，而且秉持一種拙劣的理念：勞動力的變化可以用生產力的提高等一些變量來解釋，這些因素同樣對我們的競爭對手發揮著類似的不利影響。

????“就算我們還不能做出正確的決策，但我們首先至少得理解現實，”技術與創新基金會總裁羅布?阿特金森說。“我們正面臨的競爭力挑戰遠大于我們現有的認識。”

????這份報告稱，那些戴玫瑰色眼鏡的樂天派所秉持的一項關鍵論斷其實并不正確，他們認為，效率的提高使得用更少的工人生產更多貨物成為可能，這最終是制造業實力的一項標志。問題是，經濟學家一直在使用政府發布的數據來衡量美國工廠產出的增長，并從中找到了大量好消息：比如，如今1個工人干的活放在1950年需要5個工人來做。

????但技術與創新基金會認為，這些數據所反映的情況無法充分解釋日益全球化的供應鏈。剔除這些變化后，該基金會發現在過去10年間，美國制造業的產出其實下降了11%——除大蕭條之外，這是制造業絕無僅有的一次。

????雖然許多經濟學家認為制造業的衰退無關緊要，或者說，它實際上預示著美國正在邁向以服務為導向的“創意”經濟時代，但阿特金森的研究團隊認為，制造業可以對整個經濟的其它部門產生一種無可比擬的連鎖反應：我們每失去1個制造類工作，就會相應地損失2.5個其他門類的工作。

????President Obama is becoming the cheerleader-in-chief for the manufacturing recovery, hitting factory floors to make his case that the fragile turnaround should earn him a second term. "America thrives when we build things better than the rest of the world," he told the crowd at a Rolls-Royce plant in Virginia earlier this month.

????But a new report argues that recent headlines touting a nascent manufacturing renaissance belie a grimmer reality: The sector suffered a cataclysmic decline over the last decade and is in much worse shape than most economists will admit.

????The report -- out today from the Information Technology & Innovation Foundation, a technology policy think tank -- says that measured by job creation, manufacturers registered their worst performance in history over the last decade, shedding 5.7 million jobs. As a share of total jobs, that decline is worse even than the one manufacturing suffered during the Great Depression.

????And unlike the periods following most post-World War II recessions, when manufacturing helped lead the recovery and jobs lost in the sector were restored in relatively short order, the vast majority of manufacturing jobs that disappeared over the last ten years haven't come back -- in the case of the Great Recession, that number is less than 14%.

????The group uses the numbers to make the case that American manufacturing is now facing a structural decline. It's a situation they argue that economists and pundits across the spectrum have papered over, owing both to faulty data that has understated the severity of the challenges facing the sector and a misbegotten belief that changes in the labor force can be chalked up to market dynamics -- like productivity gains -- that are taking similar tolls on our competitors.

????"We need to at least understand reality before we can make the right decisions," says Rob Atkinson, president of the ITIF. "We have a competitiveness challenge that's bigger than what we thought."

????The report argues that the key claim of the rose-colored glasses crowd -- that increased efficiency has made it possible to produce more with fewer workers, which is ultimately a sign of the sector's strength -- is in fact wrong. The problem is that economists have been using government data to measure the growth in the output of American factories and finding plenty of good news: it takes one worker today, for example, to do the work of five in 1950.

????But ITIF holds that the numbers telling that story don't adequately account for an increasingly globalized supply chain. Adjusting for those changes, the group found manufacturing output actually fell by 11% over the last decade, the only time outside of the Great Depression when the sector notched a dip.

????While many economists say manufacturing's decline doesn't matter -- or that it actually augurs progress toward a service-oriented, "ideas" economy -- Atkinson's group hopes to make the case that the sector has an unrivaled ripple effect throughout the rest of the economy: for every manufacturing job we lose, 2.5 others go with it.