Pennsylvania needs a dose of good news from the commonwealth's manufacturing sector. Unfortunately, such news continues to be elusive, as it has been over much of the last decade or so.

Thus, the question remains what really needs to be done to reverse the troubling situation. Apparently the Rendell administration doesn't have the right formula at hand, despite what the administration indicates are its aggressive efforts on the business and industrial fronts.

There haven't been any great ideas from the General Assembly either.

The latest bad news from the manufacturing front, via the U.S. Department of Labor's Bureau of Labor Statistics, is that as of June there were 660,700 manufacturing jobs in the state, seasonally adjusted, down from the 673,000 manufacturing jobs that existed in June 2006.

According to The Bulletin, a publication of the Pennsylvania Manufacturers' Association, that 1.86 percent drop for the previous 12 months was 44 percent higher (worse) than the national rate during the same period.

Meanwhile, Pennsylvania suffered a net loss of 303 manufacturing firms from May 2006 through May 2007, according to Manufacturers' News, an Evanston, Ill.-based publishing company.

Manufacturers' News says the Keystone State is home to 19,454 manufacturers, although the 2008 Harris Pennsylvania Industrial Directory, compiled in partnership with the state Department of Community and Economic Development, lists the number at 22,092.

Either way, the outflow of manufacturing enterprises continues to be a drag on the Pennsylvania economy, and state leaders should be spending less time on partisanship and more time on bipartisan efforts aimed at finding innovative ways to increase the state's attractiveness to manufacturers.

Forbes magazine's ranking of Pennsylvania as 39th-friendliest in its 2007 "Friendliest States for Business" survey confirms the scope of the challenge facing Keystone State officials. Obviously, a big part of the efforts must center on improving the state's business tax climate, which most business people regard as not having a magnetic effect in terms of attracting big, new product-making operations.

While major efforts continue to be centered on improving the state's transportation infrastructure, which services the movement of raw materials and finished products, Pennsylvania still is not well-positioned in terms of what it has to offer in competition with other states.

The PMA Bulletin says the state's manufacturers generated 15.1 percent of Gross State Product in 2005. That was 25 percent greater than the 12.1 percent of Gross National Product generated by manufacturing during that year.

But that bit of positive news continues to be eclipsed by manufacturing's employment and plant-closing woes. "Factory closings and job losses continue as Pennsylvania's growth gap widens" was the headline over the PMA Bulletin article.

Perhaps a manufacturing summit is in order to begin the process of reversing its deteriorating Keystone State fortunes — a deteriorating situation that has been in place for years. It is clear that whatever efforts have been going on behind the scenes up to now have been ineffective and need an intensive rethinking, followed by determined steps.