U.S. Jobs Lost to Outsourcing Underestimated

[Oilwellian]

Many more U.S. jobs shifted overseas in 2004 than reported by the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics, including white-collar IT, call center and other service jobs moving to India, a report from Cornell and the University of Massachusetts-Amherst.

Newswise — A just-released report to a bipartisan Congressional commission documented 48,417 U.S. jobs outsourced to other countries or publicly announced as being scheduled for outsourcing, from January through March 2004. The U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics had reported that only 4,633 private-sector jobs in companies with more than 50 employees were lost during that time period, a gross underestimation, warn the report's authors.

The new report is from two labor experts at Cornell University and the University of Massachusetts-Amherst, who obtained their information through online tracking of media reports, corporate research and the creation of a database of information on all production shifts announced or confirmed in the media. Their report was commissioned by the U.S.-China Economic and Security Review Commission, which sought the information because there is no government-mandated reporting system to track production shifts from the United States to other countries.

The authors believe their methodology only captures one-third of all production shifts in most cases, which, if true, would bring the actual number of jobs lost to outsourcing in 2004 to 406,000 by year's end, compared with 204,000 in 2001. "We know we're not capturing all the numbers because companies are wary about the negative publicity and often don't share it fully with reporters," said Kate Bronfenbrenner, director of Labor Education Research at Cornell's School of Industrial and Labor Relations and co-author of the study, along with Stephanie Luce, research director and assistant professor at U.Mass.-Amherst.

http://www.newswise.com/articles/view/507685/

http://www.news.cornell.edu/releases/Oct04/jobs.outsourcing.rpt.04.pdf

[ulysses]

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[DeepModem Mom]

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