Tom
Doug Henwood wrote:
> Max Sawicky wrote:
>
> >Scott in re: Henwood on job losses.
> >
> >mbs
> >
> >
> >Here's one basic argument that needs to be made. Its foolish to look at
> >mfg. employment changes since 1993 or 1994. That was the bottom of a
> >recession.
>
> The bottom of the recession was March 1991. The employment trough
> overall was February 1992.
>
> > The US has lost more than 1.1 million mfg. jobs since the
> >last cyclical peak in 1989, as shown in the attached table from the BLS.
>
> Here are some interesting points in the manufacturing employment history.
>
> last peak 3/89 19,483
>
> last trough 7/93 18,030
>
> NAFTA 1/94 18,155
>
> recent peak 3/98 18,883
>
> latest 4/00 18,372
>
> So of that 1.1 million loss, 1.4 million occurred between 1989 and
> 1993. We're still over 300k above the 7/93 trough. Between NAFTA
> taking effect and the recent 1998 peak, over 700k manufacturing jobs
> were added. What's happened since is almost certainly the result of
> the Asian crisis, not NAFTA - which is to say not enough trade, not
> too much.
>
> >Another point: we got lucky with NAFTA, which was put into effect just
> >as we were coming out of the recession. Output and employment growth
> >from domestic sources (C+I) more than offset losses on trade (X-M).
>
> I really wonder about this X-M technique. If exports - or trade in
> general - make growth higher than it would have been in the absence
> of exports - or trade - then you can't say that trade resulted in a
> net loss of jobs. Nor can you say antyhing about the relatlve quality
> of jobs lost and/or gained through trade. I'm no econometrician, but
> this seems like a pretty crude technique to me.
>
> Doug