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General of the Confederation of British Industry, noted that »the press have started writing articles about manufacturing success, rather than failure. […] It is noticeable how they [Government minister] want to engage today with the manufacturing sector« (Lambert, 2007: 1). In this speech Lambert argued that the CBI needed to work on raising public and political awareness of the importance of manufacturing to British society and economy. He argued that the financial services sector was »brilliant at collating data showing its critical importance to the national economy« and that manufacturing should try to do the same to demonstrate that manufacturing »[…] creates a mixed economy, not reliant on any single sector. It builds regional diversity with strong local economies. It offers a preponderance of jobs in the middle income bracket, rather than a few top earners supported by lots of low value jobs, so allowing for upward social mobility. And of course, it sustains the national science base« (Lambert, 2007: 3). The popular misconception is that manufacturing is in decline (BERR, 2008:7), in fact it has declined, and wealth creation in the UK relies on services and especially financial services. This popular misconception does not match the actual level of manufacturing activity that exists in the UK. This can be explained by three processes: the invisibility of manufacturing in society, structural realignment within national economies, and the changing nature of manufacturing. These three processes will be examined in turn. First, manufacturing has become largely invisible within British society. Large factories have closed and being replaced by retail parks, offices and housing development and employment in manufacturing had declined dramatically. This has meant that very few individuals are directly involved in manufacturing as the past thirty years have seen major shifts and improvements in manufacturing productivity, bringing greater output but fewer jobs (Bryson and Daniels, 2007a: 7-9; Mahajan, 2005). As a result manufacturing is less visible in apparently post-industrial societies, except as inventory in transit on road systems, and beyond the purview of the majority of the population (Bryson et al., 2008: 173). Second, economies are engaged in a constant process of structural realignment as mature sectors decline and new sectors and firms form around technological or process innovations. It is very difficult for governments and academics to keep up-to-date with these structural transformations and this implies that it is impossible for national statistical agencies to ensure that their economic statistics are an adequate reflection of current economic activity. This has always been the case. The UK Standard Industrial Classification of Economic Activity (SIC) is a measure of economic activity, but