IF manufacturing was a boxer, the referee would have stopped the fight and held the Australian dollar's bloodied glove in the air.
Activity in the manufacturing sector sagged against the ropes in October for the eighth month in a row, according to the Australian Industry Group's monthly survey.
The performance of manufacturing index (PMI) index came in at 45.2 in October, up by 1.1 from September's reading but still well under the 50 mark that divides growth from contraction.
In fact the PMI has been on the wrong side of 50 for all but five of the past 26 months.
And the pain has been shared around.
In October, all but two of the 11 sectors covered by the survey recorded declines in activity, with paper, printing and publishing barely into positive territory and transport equipment doing little better with a tepid gain after a big fall in September.
And it shows in the broader economic data, including the quarterly national accounts from the Australian Bureau of Statistics (ABS).
Manufacturing gross value added, the main measure of activity in the sector, fell by four per cent over the past 10 years, compared with a rise of 19 per cent in the preceding decade.
At the same time, employment in the sector fell by 114,000 in the latest decade compared with a rise of 33,000 in the decade before it.
There is no doubt the manufacturing sector is taking a savage beating and there is no doubt the beating is being administered by the high Australian dollar.
The Australian dollar's real exchange rate has risen sharply against the currencies of Australia's trading partners since commodity prices took off nearly a decade ago.
The real exchange rate adjusts the actual exchange rate for inflation rates in Australia and those other countries.
It's a key measure of competitiveness.
Reserve Bank of Australia (RBA) figures show the Australian dollar's real exchange rate over the past 10 years was 34 per cent higher than the previous 10 years.
No wonder the manufacturing sector is on the ropes.
That's a massive loss of competitiveness.
And the bout is getting even more one-sided.
The latest reading for the real exchange rate, the average for the September quarter, was 65 per cent above its level over the decade before the commodity price boom.
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