Reprint of an Editorial Published in Business New Haven

The bad news: Manufacturing employment in Connecticut dropped 6,000 jobs in 2005.

The good news: Connecticut manufacturers shipped $3 billion more in goods in 2005 than the year before.

Those somewhat surprising figures were reported November 20 in the U.S. Bureau of the Census' annual survey of manufacturers. The bottom line: More goods are being made by fewer people - the natural consequence of enhanced productivity.

The report said employment in Connecticut factories declined from 186,651 in 2004 to 180,903 in 2005. At the same time, mills in the state shipped more than $46 billion in products around the world, compared to about $43 billion a year earlier.

But there's more to the story than that. According to People's Bank economist Todd Martin, the sectors where Connecticut added jobs indicates the state is hanging on and expanding into higher-quality goods made using more-advanced technology.

For example, the state lost 150 machinery manufacturing jobs in 2005, but added 410 industrial machinery equipment jobs. It added 300 jobs in chemical manufacturing, 500 in computer- and electrical-component-making jobs and 600 in medical-device-equipment mills.

Martin pointed out that recent employment reports show losses in manufacturing jobs have slowed, which he believes may mean the industry is stabilizing.

The state's Department of Labor's employment report for October said the industry was down only 900 jobs compared to 2005. That slowdown could be because, Martin told the Connecticut Post, "The manufacturers who are left are all highly technologically advanced and flexible and probably pretty profitable."

A despite a decade of death knells for the state's manufacturing industry, Connecticut still remains squarely in the middle of the pack - ranking 25th nationally - in manufacturing employment.

So it may be - to paraphrase Mark Twain - that reports of manufacturing's death in Connecticut are somewhat exaggerated.