U.S. Survey Finds Few Jobs Moving To Offshore Homes
By MICHAEL SCHROEDER and JOSEPH REBELLO Staff Reporters of THE WALL STREET JOURNAL
WASHINGTON -- A new government outsourcing survey found a relatively small number of U.S. jobs are moving abroad, raising complaints that the report picked up only a fraction of the total number of jobs lost to outsourcing.
The Labor Department also issued separate reports showing that prices paid for imported goods and jobless claims are on the rise.
As part of a new U.S. layoff survey, the Labor Department said yesterday that only 4,633 jobs were moved overseas in the first three months of this year. The number represents less than 2% of the total 239,361 layoffs for the quarter, the report said. The industrial Midwest and South bore the brunt of the jobs lost overseas, particularly in manufacturing, the survey found.
The small number of jobs lost through layoffs likely will be used to bolster the argument that the overall loss of U.S. jobs to foreign countries isn't a threat to the economy. That argument has gained strength with the addition of almost one million new U.S. jobs since the first of the year.
The improving economy has turned down the volume on the election-year outsourcing debate. The Bush administration has endorsed the view that sending U.S. service jobs abroad probably is a plus for the economy in the long run, because foreign workers can do the jobs more cheaply, reducing costs for U.S. consumers and companies.
Dozens of U.S. state legislatures, responding to the furor over white-collar jobs being sent overseas, have considered antioutsourcing bills. The business lobby has killed or weakened every proposal to prohibit government work from being sent abroad.
An overwhelming majority of workers who lost their jobs from January through March lost them for reasons other than job relocations either in the U.S. and abroad, which accounted for just 7% of the overall tally, the report said.
Of the 16,021 workers who lost their jobs because of relocations, the jobs of 62% were transferred to locations within the U.S. "It doesn't seem like [the survey] was picking up much of a signal from the amount of offshoring we believe is going on," said Jared Bernstein, a senior economist at the Economic Policy Institute, a progressive Washington think tank.
The survey doesn't intend to present a comprehensive number of jobs relocated abroad. The survey tallies only larger companies that have had layoffs of 50 workers or more. Smaller companies and those that have fewer layoffs are left out of the mix.
Ken Levasseur, a senior economist at the Labor Department's Bureau of Labor Statistics, acknowledges the report's limitations. The numbers "are a piece of the puzzle" that should be useful to policy makers and economic analysts, he said.
Mark Zandi, chief economist at Economy.com, says the survey's results are consistent with his estimates from broader economic data suggesting that 350,000 U.S. jobs a year are going overseas.
Separately, prices paid for imported goods rose at the fastest rate in 15 months in May, driven by energy prices and suggesting that the strengthening global economic recovery is contributing to inflation.
Overall import prices rose 1.6% from the previous month, after a 0.2% gain in April, the Labor Department said. The boost resulted from a surge in energy prices, which climbed 10.3% -- the biggest increase since February 2003. Nonpetroleum prices accelerated 0.4%, following a 0.3% increase in April.
Initial jobless claims rose by 12,000 to a seasonally adjusted level of 352,000 for the week ended June 5, the Labor Department said. That marked the highest level since the week of April 17. The four-week average, a more reliable gauge of the state of the labor market, rose to a six-week high of 346,000.