The Full Outsourcing Discussion

GileadGreene writes "Thomas Friedman of the New York Times recently did an interesting Op-Ed piece about the "silver lining of overseas outsourcing": the growth that it generates in the US job market as Indian companies outsource work that US workers are better at. Apparently total exports from US companies to India have grown from $2.5 billion in 1990 to $4.1 billion in 2002 as well. So maybe this outsourcing thing isn't so bad after all." Ultimately, free trade works out well; I think one of the issues is that white collar jobs are just beginning to feel the pinch, and are acting like manufacturers did in the 1970s and 1980s.

Comments

Let's just "do other things..."

[gatkinso]

...like go on dates with our "Canadian girlfriend."

Believe it or not I actually had a Canadian girlfriend.... no, really I did!

Numbers no different than under Carter

[Shivetya]

They come from the Labor Department's. Bureau of Labor Statistics.

* The peak unemployment rate during the recession that began in Clinton's term was 6.4 percent. The current unemployment rate is 5.6 percent.
* In the last year more than 2,000,000 new jobs have been added in the United States.
* Between 1983 and 2003 outsourcing went from 6.5 million jobs to about 10 million jobs.
* Between 1983 and 2002 jobs in-sourcing -- jobs coming TO the United States -- went from 2.5 million to 6.5 million.
* If you subtract the jobs coming to the United States every year from the jobs going out every year you come up with a "net" figure. The net outsourced jobs reached its peak in the early 1980's; a peak of about 4 million jobs. In other words, things were worse at the end of the Carter Administration then they are right now.
* During this same period ... from '83 to '03 a total of 38 million jobs have been created by private businesses in the United States. No other industrialized country in the world has matched this number.