This is CBSi and the world. I'm John Bachelor welcoming Jean Marks, a small business columnist for the Guardian newspaper UK and US Edition.

Is in addition our hometown newspaper, the Philadelphia Inquirer, and the Hill and other

distinguished publications. We begin with news about manufacturing, however, there's

been emphasis on that these last years. He continues to sputter.

Gene, a very good evening to you.

Manufacturing used to drive Philadelphia,

used to drive many large cities, no longer.

Are we watching this for revival or is it just the transformation of the U.S. into

a services economy? Good evening to you, Jane.

Hi, John. Yeah, it's, um, so this week, yeah, it's so this week the Institute of Supply Managers came out with their monthly

manufacturing index and what it, it's from their purchasing

manufacturing purchasing agents that belong to this organization.

It's a very closely watched index because these are purchasing managers

for manufacturing companies.

And they're asked about what they're purchasing

and how much they're going to purchase,

as well as other economic data about their companies.

And then they put this into this metric that really kind of gives us sort of a

health of the manufacturing sector in the US.

And again, ISM has been doing this for a number of years.

You know, you really want to get an idea of how the economy is going. doing this

for a number of years. You know, you really want to get an idea of how the economy is going. This is just a great

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