On 14 Oct 2003 15:41:25 -0700, (Spehro Pefhany) wrote:
So Who's Stealing China's Manufacturing Jobs?: Caroline Baum
Oct. 14 (Bloomberg) -- You know all those U.S. manufacturing jobs that
have been high-tailing it to China? China sure is doing a lousy job of
holding on to them.

China lost 16 million manufacturing jobs, a decline of 15 percent,
between 1995 and 2002, according to a study of manufacturing jobs in
the 20 largest economies by Joe Carson, director of economic research
at Alliance Capital Management. In that same time, U.S. factory
employment shrank by 2 million, or 11 percent.
snip

Where did they go? They were eliminated due to increased productivity.

Here's the important meat of the article with respect to what's happening
in the US job market.

``Real manufacturing output has risen 77 percent even though the
number of manufacturing workers has fallen 22 percent since the
1979 peak,'' Wieting says. [Steve Wieting, Citigroup economist]

Similarly, real farm output rose 96 percent since 1979 with
31 percent fewer agricultural workers.

A rising supply of food and consumer goods caused prices to
rise more slowly than per-capita income, giving consumers more
income to spend on other things -- on services that didn't
previously exist.

[I'd add that marketers like Walmart have also helped to
cause prices to rise slower than per capita income, thus
promoting the creation of new types of jobs.]

``While manufacturing and farm employment has fallen by
22 percent and 33 percent, respectively, since 1979, total
U.S. employment still managed to grow 41 percent,'' Wieting
says.

Now this latter statistic probably won't ease the fears of Jim,
who thinks all those new jobs are at Walmart or Mcdonalds.
But US GDP-PPP growth over the same period should set
those fears to rest.

In other words, median incomes were rising at the same time
that all those old economy jobs were lost and new jobs created.
So the "displacement" appears to have been successful, at
least for the work force as a whole. Individual workers may
not have fared so well, depending on their abilities to transition
to another sort of work.

A statement made by an educator not too long ago strikes
me at this point. He said that workers entering the job market
today can expect to change careers five times before they
retire. Old jobs are going away, new jobs are being created,
and a worker has to have the flexibility to move with the
changes. Those who can't may find themselves chronically
unemployed.

Gary