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Manufacturing employment locally has been sliced in half during the past decade, but the industry that has long been the lifeblood of the Dayton region is far from dead.

The reason: local companies have fought to adapt by diversifying the type of clients they serve while going lean and investing in technology upgrades.

After losing more than 42,000 manufacturing jobs during the last decade — more than half of the jobs that existed in 2000 — employment is expected to remain flat this year, according to the most recent Wright State University Regional Economic Report. That report covers the four-county Dayton Metropolitan Statistical area.

Although the industry took a beating, many of the region’s manufacturers survived and some are even reporting the highest backlog of orders in two years.

(Click here to access database of more than 200 local manufacturers and sort by areas of expertise.)

As manufacturing begins to recover, observers say Dayton’s biggest strength lies in its diversity. The diverse manufacturing base can act as a magnet, attracting interest from outside companies, which means more opportunity for local suppliers.

From the common tool and die work to rapid prototyping to heat treating and laser cutting, the region boats a wide array of capabilities.

“We’re no longer an automotive region and actually I think that’s a good thing,” said Jim Whalen, chief executive officer of Dayton-based GemCity Engineering and Manufacturing. “We have many niche companies now that serve a wide range of industries. They’ve become the backbone of local manufacturing.”

GemCity — a contract maker of specialized equipment and products, such as reconnaissance robots used by the military — uses sources from around the globe for its services and supplies. But often, Whalen said, the company buys from local companies business

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The number of first-time filers for unemployment insurance rose to the highest level since late February last week, according to a weekly government report released Thursday.

There were 484,000 initial jobless claims filed in the week ended Aug. 7, up 2,000 from an upwardly revised 482,000 the previous week, according to the Labor Department’s weekly report.

That’s the highest number since the week ended Feb. 20, when 486,000 people filed for first-time benefits.

Economists surveyed by Briefing.com had expected new claims to fall to 465,000.

Initial claims have been stuck in the the mid- to upper- 400,000s since November.

"It’s just more of the same," said John Canally, an economist with LPL Financial. "This data doesn’t break out of the range, and that’s going to continue until companies can see their way to adding some jobs."

Canally points to the latest productivity numbers released in a separate report on Tuesday that show companies may have stretched their employees too thin. The Labor Department said worker productivity fell 0.9% in the second quarter, the first decline in 18 months.

That data may mean employers need to start hiring again. But instead, companies have been spending on new equipment and capital - rather than their payrolls - as they remain skeptical of the economic outlook, he said.

"Companies have the cash. Their profits are good. They have credit if they need it. They just haven’t been willing to step up new hiring," Canally said.

Continuing claims: The government said 4,452,000 people continued to file unemployment claims for their second week or more, during the week ended July 31, the most recent data available.

That’s down from an upwardly revised 4,570,000 the week before.

Standard unemployment benefits usually last 26 weeks, and the continued claims number does not include those who have moved into state or federal extensions, or people whose benefits have expired but may still be without a job.

Meanwhile, the four-week moving average for weekly initial claims was 473,500, up from 459,250 the previous week.

The Labor Department tracks the four-week moving average of the weekly figures to smooth out the volatility of the measure.

The national unemployment rate currently stands at 9.5%.

State by state: Jobless claims in six states increased by more than 1,000 in the week ended July 31, the most recent state data available. Claims in Wisconsin increased the most, by 1,901. 

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Hyundai Motor Co. announced Wednesday that it has set a goal to boost the fuel efficiency of its U.S. vehicle lineup to an average of 50 miles per gallon by 2025.

That target would put the the South Korean automaker more then 40% above the 35.5 miles per gallon level that U.S. government is pushing automakers to reach by 2016.

"Getting to 50 miles per gallon seems like a huge leap, but by making this commitment and aligning our research and development initiatives now, we know we can get there," said John Krafcik, Hyundai Motor America president and chief executive, in a statement.

Highway fuel efficiency for 2010 Hyundai models ranges from 36 miles per gallon in the subcompact Accent to 22 miles per gallon for the Veracruz, a sport-utility vehicle, according to the U.S. Department of Energy.

The 2011 Sonata, which went on sale earlier this year, achieves 35 miles per gallon on the highway.

The government says the leading fuel-efficient car for the year is the Toyota Prius, a hybrid that logs 48 miles per gallon on the highway. 

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Family Dollar Stores Inc. ended the week on an up note, with its shares gaining value during a lackluster day on Wall Street.

Shares of the discount retailer gained 37 cents Friday, closing at $41.35.

The Dow Jones Industrials closed out the week at 10,465.9, gaining just over a point on Friday.

Among key public companies in the Charlotte area:

•Bank of America Corp. (NYSE:BAC) closed at $14.04, up a penny.

•Wells Fargo & Co. (NYSE:WFC), San Francisco parent of Charlotte-based Wachovia Bank, closed at $27.73, up 4 cents.

•Mooresville-based Lowe’s Cos. Inc. (NYSE:LOW) closed at $20.74, up 26 cents.

•SPX Corp. (NYSE:SPW) closed at $59.56, up 21 cents.

•Snack maker Lance Inc. (NASDAQ:LNCE) closed at $21.13, up 7 cents.

These stocks gave up ground Friday:

•Duke Energy Corp. (NYSE:DUK) closed at $17.10, down 7 cents.

•Nucor Corp. (NYSE:NUE) closed at $39.14, down 2 cents.

•Piedmont Natural Gas Co. Inc. (NYSE:PNY) closed at $26.62, down 33 cents.

•Concord-based Speedway Motorsports Inc. (NYSE:TRK) closed at $13.72, down 13 cents.

•Cato Corp. (NYSE:CATO) closed at $23.28, down 29 cents.

•Goodrich Corp. (NYSE:GR) closed at $72.87, down 8 cents.

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Alloy Surfaces Co. has been awarded a three-year contract worth $38.3 million to produce MJU-49/B decoy devices for the Navy, the Defense Department said Friday.

The devices are fired by aircraft to lure away heat-seeking missiles and use Alloy’s patented technology to emit infrared energy in the same band that aircraft do no fax payday loan.

Alloy will make them at its plant in Aston, Pa.

The company is a subsidiary of the Chemring Group PLC, which is based in Whiteley, England.

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Procter & Gamble Co. said Monday that it has closed on the acquisition of Sara Lee Corp.’s Ambi Pur brand.

P&G first announced the acquisition in December. It paid 320 million euros, or about $402 million, for the line of air freshener products, which are marketed in Europe and the United Kingdom.

“The acquisition of Ambi Pur strengthens P&G’s global leadership in home care and specifically air care by extending our reach to serve more consumers in more parts of the world more completely,” said David Taylor, P&G group president, global home care, in a news release payday loan companies.

The company said previously the acquisition will not have a material impact on its fiscal 2010 results. P&G’s fiscal year ended June 30.

Procter & Gamble (NYSE: PG), headquartered in Cincinnati, develops, manufactures and markets consumer products and pharmaceuticals. Sara Lee Corp. (NYSE: SLE) is headquartered in Downers Grove, Ill.

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Manhattan home prices held steady during the second quarter of 2010 but transactions were 81% higher than this time last year, according to several real estate market reports released Thursday.

There were more than 2,700 sales during the three months ended June 30, according to one report, which is average in a normal real estate market but up significantly from the 1,500 sales during the second quarter of 2009.

Manhattan is the nation’s most expensive large housing market. A two-bedroom, 1,250-square-foot condo apartment would cost about $400,000 in San Francisco, $250,000 in Los Angeles, $130,000 in Dallas and $100,000 in Miami. But in most of Manhattan, buyers are looking at $1.2 million or so.

That did not change much during the housing bust. The median home price in Manhattan fell about 20% from its peak, according to Greg Heym, a housing market economist who calculates market statistics for two of New York’s biggest brokers. And that is a lot less than bubble markets such as Miami, Phoenix and Las Vegas, where prices were slashed by half or more.

"And we’ve already gotten close to 10% of that back," Heym said.

Indeed, Heym’s latest Manhattan market report for brokers Brown Harris Stevens and Halstead reveals a continued pattern of a stabilizing Manhattan market. And surveys from the Corcoran Group and Prudential Douglas Elliman, two other premiere brokerages, concur.

"There’s no big news on prices," said Pam Liebman, Corcoran’s CEO. "The news is that there are a lot of buyers. We’re very happy seeing so much absorption [of inventory]."

The median sale price for a condominium or cooperative apartment in Manhattan was nearly $900,000, according to Prudential Douglas Elliman, more than the $843,000 calculated by Halstead and Brown Harris Stevens, and $810,000 posted by Corcoran.

These prices were either flat year-over-year (Corcoran) or up 7.6% (Prudential) or 6% (Brown and Halstead), compared with the second quarter of 2009. They were either down 1% (Corcoran) from the first quarter of 2010 or up 3.6% (Prudential) or 2.8% (Brown and Halstead).

The median price statistics may be a bit deceptive, according to Jonathan Miller, of the noted New York appraisal firm Miller Samuel, which calculates prices for Prudential guaranteed approval cash advance loans. He said the number of high-end apartments sold has grown disproportionately, which pulled up the median price.

"The market share for three-bedroom apartments, for example, increased to 18% from 12% a year earlier," said Miller.

The trend to more sales of larger apartments is evident in inventory statistics as well. The supply of big, luxury apartments fell 13% while inventory of the rest of the market rose slightly.

That happened even though lenders are not making it any easier for buyers of expensive homes to get loans. Miller said there has been no relaxing of strict underwriting standards in the jumbo loan market, mortgages for more than $729,750.

Consequently, many of the well-heeled luxury homebuyers are foregoing mortgages entirely. Liebman she said a large percentage of her agents report that at least half their buyers are paying all cash.

"It’s the highest amount of cash transactions I’ve ever seen," added Miller.

What has helped keep the local market strong has been a rebound in the financial services industry, the big town’s biggest economic driver.

"They’re hiring again on Wall Street," said Heym, "and overall unemployment has fallen every month this year."

Demand for housing figures to remain strong. The work force for all of New York City has swelled to more than 4 million for the first time, and many of those workers aspire to live in Manhattan.

And, with the precipitous drop in crime over the past 20 years, families have returned to the city with a vengeance: It seems nearly impossible at times to walk down any west side avenue without tripping over a stroller.

"In earlier recessions, what happened is that many people left the city," said Heym. "But the efforts to improve the quality of life here, better schools, less crime, have led people to stay." 

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If embattled BP chief executive Tony Hayward leaves the company, he is not likely to walk with a massive windfall, compensation experts said.

While his departure is not imminent, speculation is rampant that the oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico will cost Hayward his job. According to a prediction market run by Intrade, there is a 70% chance Hayward will be gone before the year is out.

That raises the question of how much severance he could receive if he steps down.

BP spokesman David Nicholas would not comment when asked about a possible severance plan, adding that Hayward remains the company’s chief executive.

But experts say Hayward will probably not get a lucrative package of bonus money and stock awards that many U.S. companies give to outgoing CEOs as so-called golden parachutes.

"He will be lucky to get a single year’s salary," said Paul Hodgson, a senior researcher at The Corporate Library, a governance group. "And even that could be mitigated in certain circumstances."

Hayward’s salary last year was just over 1 million British pounds, or $1.5 million, according to BP’s annual report. He also received a bonus worth more than $3 million and stock valued at nearly $1 million in 2009, the report said.

Given his recent track record, however, Hayward will probably not get a bonus this year, Hodgson said. It is also unlikely that he will receive much in the way of stock awards, which are often the most lucrative part of a severance package.

According to BP’s annual report, Hayward stands to gain nearly 1.2 million "performance shares" under a deferred compensation plan for company directors. But those shares, which would vest in 2011, are contingent on "an assessment of safety and environmental sustainability," the report said.

"If there are shares that are unvested, such as the performance shares, they are unlikely to vest," said Hodgson. "Shareholder return is not going to look good, and the performance condition won’t be met."

Shares of BP’s U online payday loans.S.-listed stock have plunged 50% in the weeks since the April 20 disaster and shareholder groups are threatening to sue BP for damages.

The sell-off could also hit Hayward, who owned over 500,000 options to buy U.K.-listed shares of BP at the end of last year, according to the company’s annual report. Those options, which are set to expire in 2011 or 2012, are currently worthless. But they could have some value if the stock recovers.

To be sure, Hayward will not be destitute if he leaves BP. In his 28 years of service, he has amassed a pension worth over $16 million, according to the annual report.

"Retirement is really the bulk of what he will see," said Julie Davidson, a consultant at Cogent Compensation Partners. But it is not clear whether the 53-year old executive will be eligible for retirement benefits before he turns 60, she added.

Davidson said BP’s board appears to have more discretion over severance payments than companies in the United States - particularly when performance is lacking.

"This is a contrast to what you see in the U.S.," she said. "He’s probably not going to get very much."

The average severance package for the chief executive of a major U.S. corporation is three times annual salary, plus bonus and stock awards, according to Hodgson.

These types of golden parachutes were intensely criticized last year after a number of chief executives at financial firms were awarded billions of dollars in compensation despite exceptionally poor performance.

Hodgson, who previously worked for the London-based publication Executive Compensation Review, said that few U.K. companies award severance packages comparable to their U.S. counterparts.

"In the U.K., compensation committees tend to have a little bit more muscle and shareholders have more say when it comes to poor performance," he said. 

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The "Keep Austin Weird" campaign must have worked, because the Texas capital is among the country’s oddball cities that bucked the downturn.

In fact, Texas cities starred on the new list of recession-proof metro areas, with six of 21 spots, according to MetroMonitor, a quarterly report released by Brookings Institute’s Metropolitan Policy Program.

These 21 large metro areas were singled out by Brookings for keeping their labor and housing markets stable and posting robust economic activity during the past few years.

In fact, all but five of the 21 leading cities have economic output levels that top records set just prior to the recession.

"Most of these cities have some general characteristics in common," said Howard Weil, author of the report and a fellow at the Metropolitan Policy Program. "They didn’t experience huge housing bubbles followed by a crash, and their economies weren’t rooted in the auto industry."

Weil added that a number of cities are also government centers, like Austin, where job cuts have been limited and spending remains healthy.

Gross metropolitan product, a broad measure economic activity, has surged the most in the nation’s capital. In first quarter of 2010, the economy in Washington D.C. expanded by 6.3% from its pre-recession peak. Austin also touts considerable growth at 5.3%.

"We’ve seen a significant increase in government spending since the start of the recession, and even though it has been spread throughout other parts of the country, some of that extra spending stays in the D.C. metro area," Weil said. "But if government hawks succeed in cutting spending, we could see the growth in Washington slow down."

Meanwhile, as unemployment rates climbed higher in every major city across the nation during the recession, the jobless rate in Austin only rose to 7.1% in March 2010 from 3.5% three years earlier. During the same period, the U.S. unemployment rate spiked to 9.7% from 4.4%.

"We have a stable base of employment with the University of Texas, one of the largest universities in the country, and the second largest state government with 65,000 employees," said Austin Mayor Lee Leffingwell.

Similarly, job losses were muted in Austin, as employment in Texas’s capital city dropped by 2.3% from its pre-recession peak through the first quarter of 2010.

Leffingwell said that a decade ago, Austin worked to attract high-tech companies, and while some manufacturing jobs in the sector have since diminished, companies are still expanding their workforce, including Samsung Electronics, which recently announced a $3.6 billion project that boosts the company’s payroll by 500 permanent positions.

And during the last two quarters, Austin welcomed job growth, adding nearly 8,000 new jobs during the period and increasing payrolls by more than 1%. Augusta, Ga.; Jackson, Miss.; Dallas; and Honolulu also posted similar gains.

"We’ve worked hard to diversify our economy and are aggressively targeting companies focused on renewable energy, medical technology and digital media," Leffingwell said.

Earlier this year, Texas invested $1.4 million through its Texas Enterprise Fund to lure Facebook into opening its first office outside of Palo Alto, Calif., in Austin. The social media giant opened the office last month and is actively hiring for its online sales and operations team. Facebook said it plans to hire over 200 employees in Austin over the next four years.

Meanwhile, further south, McAllen, Texas, which also made the top 21, has been boasting job growth for the past four straight quarters, and employment in the city has only declined by a modest 1.1% during the recession.

Houston, another Texas city, is included among the recession-proof metro areas for enjoying the smallest slide in housing prices at just 0.5% through the first quarter of 2010 compared to three years earlier. Austin followed close behind with a 0.6% dip during the same period.  

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Intel Corp. said Monday that it is in talks with the U.S. Federal Trade Commission on a possible settlement of the government's antitrust case against the giant chipmaker.

The Santa Clara-based company (NASDAQ:INTC) said in a regulatory filing that both sides have filed a motion to suspend proceedings until July 22 in the antitrust trial while both sides work on the potential settlement.

The FTC sued in December, saying Intel had illegally stifled competition for a decade. The action came after Intel settled similar charges in a civil case brought by Advanced Micro Devices Inc. (NYSE:AMD) and was fined by the European Union in a separate antitrust case.

A settlement with the FTC is expected to prompt another one with Nvidia Corp. (NASDAQ:NVDA), which also claims that Intel has illegally used its dominant market position to cut off competition.

New York Attorney General Andrew Cuomo has also filed antitrust allegations against Intel.

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