Posted on 04/22/2011 10:34:53 AM PDT by Palter
Work Forces Shrink at Home, Sharpening Debate on Economic Impact of Globalization
U.S. multinational corporations, the big brand-name companies that employ a fifth of all American workers, have been hiring abroad while cutting back at home, sharpening the debate over globalization's effect on the U.S. economy.
The companies cut their work forces in the U.S. by 2.9 million during the 2000s while increasing employment overseas by 2.4 million, new data from the U.S. Commerce Department show. That's a big switch from the 1990s, when they added jobs everywhere: 4.4 million in the U.S. and 2.7 million abroad.
In all, U.S. multinationals employed 21.1 million people at home in 2009 and 10.3 million elsewhere, including increasing numbers of higher-skilled foreign workers.
The trend highlights the growing importance of other economies, particularly in rapidly growing Asia, to big U.S. businesses such as General Electric Co., Caterpillar Inc., Microsoft Corp. and Wal-Mart Stores Inc.
The data also underscore the vulnerability of the U.S. economy, particularly at a time when unemployment is high and wages aren't rising. Jobs at multinationals tend to pay above-average wages and, for decades, sustained the American middle class.
Some on the left view the job trend as reason for the U.S. government to keep companies from easily exporting work overseas and importing products back to the U.S. or to more aggressively match job-creating policies used in some foreign markets. More business-friendly analysts view the same data as the sign that the U.S. may be losing its appeal as a place for big companies to invest and hire.
"It's definitely something to worry about," says economist Matthew Slaughter, who served as an adviser to former president George W. Bush. Mr. Slaughter, now at Dartmouth College's Tuck School of Business, is among those who think the U.S. has lost some allure.
(Excerpt) Read more at online.wsj.com ...
Is this that giant sucking sound R.P. was talking about?
Now THAT'S funny.
“Our Constitution was made only for a moral and religious people. It is wholly inadequate to the government of any other.”
John Adams
“We need Americans to except lower wages and a lower standard of living. It’s the only way to compete.”
We can also embargo enemy countries like Red China, and put regulations in place to stop imports from countries where 5 year-olds work 15 hour shifts...
Sounds like anti-business claptrap to me.
Our economy will continue to export jobs until government policies make employing Americans here more competitive...IRS, FICA, OSHA, EEOC, EPA...and on and on. Instead we do every thing possible to see that the jobs that can’t be exported go to illegals from other countries.
Where is Patriotism? Why the bowing down to the almighty dollar?
Why do we let unions kill jobs here in America?
Sickening!
What are you talking about, union membership is at an all time low.
It's not Unions killing jobs.
“Our Constitution was made only for a moral and religious people. It is wholly inadequate to the government of any other.”
John Adams
Yep and so are taxes. Taxes and union blame is the mantra of job exporters. The real reason is they make more money using cheap labor, child, sweatshop or otherwise. Hiring in other countries while Americans are unemployed is not to be admired anymore than profit justifies the sale of products that would endanger our security.
A little bit of devils advocate here, not as a defense for everything that some big companies can do, but:
If the total numbers are driven by similarities to the three companies shown above - Oracle, GE and Caterpillar, then their anecdotal evidence suggests that the statistics, plus the context, company by company, may be less significant (in terms of U.S. “losses”) than they seem.
Both Oracle and GE did not have fewer U.S. employees. They both did grew more in employees outside the U.S., than in the U.S. because of acquisitions of foreign companies and their own growth overseas. While GE’s drop in its total U.S. employees was during a period when GE was selling divisions and subsidiaries to others; a process it is not done with yet.
When a U.S. based company, like GE, sells a U.S. based business or some U.S. operation, that may show up in the numbers as “fewer U.S. employees”, for them and for “U.S. multinationals”, but, in that case it does not represent fewer “U.S. jobs”. For instance, NBC and it’s jobs are not going away when its ownership shifts from “multinational” GE to “domestic” Comcast.
When Toyota greatly increased how much of it’s production it shifted from its own plants to hundreds of outisde contractors, mostly domestic, it probably reflected a “reduction” in the total number of Japan-based “Toyota” jobs, but was not a reduction of “Japanese jobs” per se. Much of that same sort of thing has been going on in the U.S. “multinational” car industry for more than a decade. Jobs have not just shifted from Ford, GM and Chrysler (and seen as fewer employees on their payrolls) to contractors overseas, they have shifted work from themselves to U.S. contractors as well; in addition to selling off operations to U.S, businesses. That may have affected their own “number of jobs” more than it affected “U.S. jobs”.
By that understanding, every job that leaves the payroll of a U.S. multinational company is not necessarily a job that leaves the U.S., and every time a company’s jobs grow more overseas than in the U.S. it is not necessarily at the expense of U.S. jobs and can be attributed to growth of the company’s business in other markets.
I think it’s possible that what is being seen in the “U.S. multinational” “number of employees” statistics is likely to be seen in the numbers for “multinationals” worldwide.
That’s not to dismiss the fact that there are fewer manufacturing jobs in particular. But, not all of that loss was “exported”; a good amount came from a huge increase in automation and robotics. Almost nothing made today requires as many “manufacturing plant floor” workers to produce as was required 10, 20 and 30 years ago. And manufacturing as a whole is not at the end of those advances either. The other shift in manufacturing and in multinationals has been the movement of jobs and job categories to the payroll of someone else - [”let’s focus on our core business and hire some other outfit to do that”]. Some of that does involve “export” of jobs, but not all. Some just moves jobs from a bigger company to a smaller company in the same job market.
Keep doing it, big shots. Let’s see your experiment in globalism through. Oh, and be ready to move permanently to your preferred countries, because policies will probably change abruptly at some point in time.
And Trump shall win.
OK, I uess we should just settle down to our straw huts and bowl of noodles. On New Years we may even get a bit of meat!
At the same time, to make itself attractive to prospective buyers it had been shedding jobs in the U.S. and hiring in India, China and Singapore.
Why do I keep hearing so much about unions then? UAW, SEIU, Governemnt workers, Teachers, who else. If unions are so small then why do they have so much power?
Now, can you give me a name of anyone else out there who actually maybe could win?
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