Friday, July 15, 2005

Offshoring Numbers

“What are we going to do about all of these manufacturing jobs going overseas?” is probably one of the most frequently asked questions that I get after my talks. It is an emotional issue in many communities.

Here are the latest numbers that I’ve found in my research. We used to manufacture more than 90% of goods that we consumed in this country. Today it is down to 75%, still a fairly high percentage.

In the past year the USA economy added 15 million new jobs, while eliminating 13 million jobs for a net gain of over 2 million jobs. In the past five years from 135,000 to 250,000 jobs have been offshored each year. Doing the math, that is from 1 to 2% of the jobs that are lost each year. Not a very high percentage, unless you are one of those 1 or 2%.

China is often viewed as growing its manufacturing base at the expense of the USA. The two million American manufacturing jobs that have been lost are cited. Never mentioned is that China lost fifteen million manufacturing jobs during the same period of time.

The USA economy is a vibrant one. It creates new jobs and eliminates old ones. This vibrancy is what makes our economy the best in the world.

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