"If we look here in North Carolina for example ... we have lost over 200,000 manufacturing jobs in this state just in this decade," says Dr. Walden, a professor of agricultural and resource economics. "That's 27 percent of all manufacturing jobs.

"Most people think, 'Gosh, that must mean we are manufacturing less -- if you stood at the factory door and all the factory doors in North Carolina and counted what's coming out of the factory doors it must be down,'" he says. "And actually that's not the case. We are actually today in North Carolina manufacturing more in terms of the quantity of manufactured items today than ever before ... .

"We are actually up 5 percent in the quantity of manufactured products in the state since 2000, and we've actually doubled the amount of manufactured products in the state over the last 25 years," he says. "Now given we are certainly manufacturing different things. We are manufacturing fewer textile products, fewer clothes, fewer cigarettes. But we are manufacturing more computers, pharmaceuticals, processed food and vehicle parts.

"Now again many people would say, 'How can that be? How can you have fewer people working in the factory and yet you are manufacturing more?' That's because worker productivity is up," Walden explains. "In fact it is up almost 50 percent in North Carolina this decade, and that's because we are pairing workers with advanced machinery and technology."