dolution

CASE STUDY

Job Losses in High U.S. Import-Competing Industries

Table 3.3 shows the number of workers who lost their jobs (i.e., were displaced) in various high import-competing industries in the United States between 1979 and 1999. High import-competing industries were broadly defined as those in the top 25 percent in import shares. From the table, we see that almost 6.5 million workers lost their jobs in these industries over the 1979–1999 period, with the electrical machinery and apparel industries leading the list, with 1,181,000 and 1,136,000 jobs lost, respectively. More recently, the AFL-CIO estimated that the nation has lost more than 2.5 million manufacturing jobs and more than 850,000 professional service and information sector jobs from 2001 to 2004. Forrester Research Inc. estimated that 588,000 U.S. jobs have been going overseas annually from 2005 to 2009 and predicts that U.S. employers will move another 3.4 million white-collar jobs overseas by 2015. As Case Study 3-4 shows, however, only a small fraction of these job losses were due to imports, as such. Most were lost to technological change and outsourcing