Posted on 03/13/2013 6:19:00 AM PDT by MichCapCon
The outsourcing of U.S. jobs to other countries has been a political hot button during presidential debates and Michigan gubernatorial elections.
One poll found it to be the top concern of Michigan residents age 18-29.
Yet, there were only 2,687 jobs outsourced to other countries in the entire U.S. in 2012, according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics. The BLS report calculates the figures quarterly and lists them as "out-of-country relocations."
With over 134 million jobs in the U.S., that means about 1 in every 50,000 was shipped to another country last year. The BLS doesn’t separate the data by state because of concerns over company privacy. However, based on a general calculation using the numbers available and factoring in Michigan's share of jobs in the nation, that means about 79 of the state's nearly 4 million jobs were outsourced to other countries last year.
By comparison, Michigan exported $56.9 billion of goods to other countries in 2012.
"I think [outsourcing] is just blown out of proportion," said Don Byrne, a former University of Detroit Mercy economics professor who now is an adjunct finance professor at the University of California-Berkeley.
Nicholas Aakre, a researcher with the BLS, said the data doesn’t necessarily capture every job that moves overseas. He said there are a significant number of job relocations in which the employer is unaware of how many jobs are impacted.
James Hohman, a fiscal policy analyst with the Mackinac Center for Public Policy, said it was a myth that countries like China are taking a lot of U.S. jobs.
"Few companies take U.S. jobs overseas, yet this is the most overstated economic fear," Hohman said. "Most jobs are gained and lost due to regular turnover; only a microscopic fraction is lost due to plants relocating abroad. This means that improving the economy requires improving the business climate for everyone."
The number of U.S. jobs leaving the country has shrunk over time. In 2004, there were 16,197 jobs that went to other countries. That dropped to 10,378 in 2009 and 3,826 in 2011.
NOW, the next argument will be to KEEP these needed employees or airplanes will fall out of the sky an ...
Wha ?
Already ?
OK ... ne'er mind.
Um,IBM alone outsourced several thousand jobs last year.
Lies, damn lies, and BLS statistics.
www.kpmginstitutes.com has more realistic numbers.
U.S. companies signed $6.77 billion in outsourcing contracts last year, so yeah, the BLS is full of shite.
We can’t even insource them. (jobless claims dropping means nothing. You can’t be included if you drop off cause time expired or you just plain give up. Still sounds like 87+million not working.)
Commenting on the "jobless" recovery an Oct 17th 2003 article in Morgan Stanley's Global Stephen Roach wrote of "Imported Productivity" and "income leakage" vis-à-vis the business cycle recovery (the one starting in late 2001) compared to recoveries of the past.
"Wage and salary disbursements -- by far the dominant component of personal income -- are basically unchanged in real terms fully 21 months into this [2001] recovery. By contrast, at this juncture in the past six upturns, real wage income has been up, on average, by about 9%. The gap between the current cycle and the norm of earlier cycles works out to a shortfall of about $320 billion in real terms, or 4.4% of the current level of real disposable personal income..."Sourcing demand through low-cost, offshore labor input has become an increasingly important tactic to enhance the operating efficiency of US businesses... the American workforce is not sharing the benefits. The resulting clash between the owners of capital and the providers of labor has resulted in profound tensions in the US body politic. Imported productivity, together with the jobless recovery and income leakage it implies, is the stuff of heightened trade frictions, mounting protectionist risks, and a populist assault on Corporate America.
". . . In my view, the income leakages of imported productivity raise serious questions about the sustainability of this recovery from an economic point of view. At the same time, the political reaction to the resulting jobless recovery raises equally profound questions about sustainability from a political standpoint."
My company outsourced dozens of jobs last year. What they do is when an American quits,retires, or retires, the replacement is Indian either offshore, or green carded in to sit next to us in the USA.
From the same folks who give us those totally accurate and transparent unemployment figures (that leave out major categories of the unemployed).
Someone is smoking crack
Q. How come most items you buy are made somewhere else?
A. Because American jobs have been outsourced.
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