Manufacturing Sector Makes A Comeback?

An article in the Telegraph argues that the current-shake up of the market has reversed the oft-predicted view that Western economies are drifting from a manufacturing to services focus. The paper says that oil, pharmaceuticals and technology production is making a come back in the UK while retail and banking is declining:

Two years ago financial services dominated – overtaking even the combined might of our oil giants: BP, Shell and British Gas. Not surprisingly oil and gas has regained the number one spot – by some considerable margin. The pharmaceutical sector takes second place followed by the resources sector, which is made up by the dozen or so international miners that have made London their home.
Vodafone pushes the telecoms sector into fourth place, with the politically incorrect multi-national tobacco groups taking fourth spot.

Hardly the services dominated economy that doesn’t make anything that we are told we have become. In fact, even with the might of Tesco, our retailers only make it into eighth place – two places above our beleaguered banks.

FTSE 100 shows Britain’s not quite the service economy we all believe – Telegraph