New study sees 406,000 jobs moving offshore in 2004
The outsourcing of U.S. jobs overseas is proceeding at an accelerating
pace, according to a new study released Friday.The data suggest that
406,000 jobs will be shifted from the United States to other countries
this year, the study found. By comparison, 204,000 jobs were shifted in
2001. Cornell University and the University of Massachusetts at Amherst
conducted the study for the U.S.-China Economic and Security Review
Commission. Job shifting to India is outpacing shifts to China, the
study found. Richard D'Amato, the chairman of the commission, said
Congress must "enact corporate reporting requirements" to track job
shifts. The authors of the report conducted a media tracking exercise
from January to March. All regions of America are affected by the
shifts, but the Midwest has been especially hard-hit, the data
indicated. Unionized workplaces are disproportionately hurt by the
production shifts. Almost 40 percent of all jobs being shifted out of
the country are from unionized facilities, the report concluded. The
report said the Bureau of Labor Statistics "grossly underestimates" the
number of jobs lost overseas. While the government found only 4,633
private sector workers lost their jobs to global outsourcing from
January to March 2004, the authors said they were able to "find solid
confirmation for an absolute minimum of 25,000 jobs shifted out of the
United States during that same period. [more]
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