BIZCHINA / America
Do not blame China for job losses in the US
By Guo Di (China Daily)
Updated: 2006-05-09 09:09
Many Americans, influenced by US media, believe that their jobs are being
stolen by competitors from China.
This opinion, which is widely bought by workers in manufacturing sectors,
has great influence on the US Government.
In view of this, it is necessary to analyze the employment situation in
the United States.
The transfer of traditional industries overseas constitutes one of the
major reasons for job loss in the United States.
Expensive US labour costs have led to the shifting of primary
manufacturing industries to other countries where the price of labour is
much lower.
The core competitive edge of the US economy lies in technological
innovation, service industries and high-tech manufacturing. Transferring
traditional industries overseas helps the country focus on developing the
industries in which it enjoys advantages over other economies.
This strategy can enhance its international competitive power as much as
possible and also brings fat profits to US companies.
But workers in sectors that have become hollowed out have to look
elsewhere for employment, and this is a major problem. When their old
skills fail to meet the requirements of new posts, they face unemployment.
On the other hand, China is not the only country affected in this kind of
industrial transfer.
The bulk of Chinese exports to the United States are labour-intensive
products. If China stopped exporting such products to the United States,
the Western nation would not engage in making these goods anyway. And
other countries would fill the vacancy.
Scientific and technological progress and the increase of productivity
have robbed many Americans of their jobs.
Since the beginning of the 1990s, US companies have invested heavily in
IT, automation and artificial intelligence technologies, which have
helped raise the productivity by large margins. But wide application of
new technologies and the sharp enhancement of productivity have led to
job redundancies.
Of course, there is still a huge demand for workers in newly emerging
sectors. But the posts created by these new industries are less than the
jobs lost in traditional sectors. This renders the employment pressure
all the more serious.
In addition to those in traditional sectors, many US high-tech workers
have also lost their jobs recently as a result of the bubble burst of
high-tech shares on the stock market.
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