Journalist Confuses Activity and Growth

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In yet another examples of journalistic innumeracy, this article confuses a quantity, manufacturing activity, with its variation, growth.

The title “Manufacturing growth is down for third straight month,” leads you to believe it says that growth is lower but activity is still growing.

The first sentence confirms this: “Manufacturing growth in August remained as it had been in the previous two months—sluggish.” Sluggish does not mean negative.

But the next paragraph tells you that manufacturing activity had actually been contracting, not growing: “ISM’s index used to measure manufacturing activity, was 49.6 in August, which is 0.2 percentage points below July and 0.1 percent lower than June. A reading of 50 or higher indicates growth is occurring.”

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