>By Daniel W. Drezner (the blogger)
>http://www.foreignaffairs.org/
>http://www.foreignaffairs.org/20040501faessay83304/daniel-w-drezner/the-outsourcing-bogeyman.html
>>...As for the jobs that can be sent offshore, even if the most
>>dire- sounding forecasts come true, the impact on the economy will
>>be negligible. The Forrester prediction of 3.3 million lost jobs,
>>for example, is spread across 15 years. That would mean 220,000
>>jobs displaced per year by offshore outsourcing -- a number that
>>sounds impressive until one considers that total employment in the
>>United States is roughly 130 million, and that about 22 million new
>>jobs are expected to be added between now and 2010. Annually,
>>outsourcing would affect less than .2 percent of employed Americans.
Hmmm. I should sue. Me in The Nation, March 4 issue <http://www.thenation.com/doc.mhtml?i=20040322&c=5&s=cavanagh#content>:
>The most widely cited projections for offshoring come from Forrester
>Research, which estimated in a November 2002 report that 3.3 million
>service-industry jobs would go offshore by 2015. That looks like a
>big number, but it needs to be put in perspective. In January the
>United States had 108 million service jobs. According to the Bureau
>of Labor Statistics, the economy should add 22 million jobs between
>2000 and 2010 (almost all of them in services); if we stretch that
>projection to account for the additional years in the Forrester
>study, that's 33 million. So the best estimates we have are that the
>outsourcing total equals about one in thirty of today's jobs, or one
>in ten of the next decade's new jobs.
Drezner:
>There is no denying that the number of manufacturing jobs has fallen
>dramatically in recent years, but this has very little do with
>outsourcing and almost everything to do with technological
>innovation. As with agriculture a century ago, productivity gains
>have outstripped demand, so fewer and fewer workers are needed for
>manufacturing. If outsourcing were in fact the chief cause of
>manufacturing losses, one would expect corresponding increases in
>manufacturing employment in developing countries. An Alliance
>Capital Management study of global manufacturing trends from 1995 to
>2002, however, shows that this was not the case: the United States
>saw an 11 percent decrease in manufacturing employment over the
>course of those seven years; meanwhile, China saw a 15 percent
>decrease and Brazil a 20 percent decrease. Globally, the figure for
>manufacturing jobs lost was identical to the U.S. figure -- 11
>percent. The fact that global manufacturing output increased by 30
>percent in that same period confirms that technology, not trade, is
>the primary cause for the decrease in factory jobs.
Me:
>Most of the job losses in the United States in recent years have not
>been in services, the main focus of offshoring worries, but in
>manufacturing. That sector has lost 3.3 million jobs over the past
>six years, or one in five--far more than during the early 1980s
>recession, the period that gave us the term Rust Belt.
>
>Everyone knows where those went--Mexico first, then China, right?
>Maybe not. A study of twenty major economies done last fall by
>Joseph Carson, the chief economist at Alliance Capital, found that
>factory employment declined by 11 percent between 1995 and 2002.
>Brazil lost 20 percent of its manufacturing jobs, and China, rather
>stunningly, lost 15 percent (mainly because gains in the new
>private-sector enterprises weren't enough to offset losses in
>failing state enterprises). Factory employment rose in a handful of
>countries, but mostly by small amounts. The major reason for the
>shrinkage, Carson and other economists have explained, is the same
>as it's been for decades: Machines are doing more of the work, and
>people, less.