Where are the jobs? For many companies, overseas

[democracy1st]

Corporate profits are up. Stock prices are up. So why isn't anyone hiring?

Actually, many American companies are — just maybe not in your town. They're hiring overseas, where sales are surging and the pipeline of orders is fat.

More than half of the 15,000 people that Caterpillar Inc. has hired this year were outside the U.S. UPS is also hiring at a faster clip overseas. For both companies, sales in international markets are growing at least twice as fast as domestically.

The trend helps explain why unemployment remains high in the United States, edging up to 9.8 percent last month, even though companies are performing well: All but 4 percent of the top 500 U.S. corporations reported profits this year, and the stock market is close to its highest point since the 2008 financial meltdown.

But the jobs are going elsewhere. The Economic Policy Institute, a Washington think tank, says American companies have created 1.4 million jobs overseas this year, compared with less than 1 million in the U.S. The additional 1.4 million jobs would have lowered the U.S. unemployment rate to 8.9 percent, says Robert Scott, the institute's senior international economist.

Coca-Cola CEO Muhtar Kent often points out that a billion consumers will enter the middle class during the coming decade, mostly in Africa, China and India. He is aggressively targeting those markets. Of Coke's 93,000 global employees, less than 13 percent were in the U.S. in 2009, down from 19 percent five years ago.

The company would not say how many new U.S. hires it has made in 2010. But its latest new investments are overseas, including $240 million for three bottling plants in Inner Mongolia as part of a three-year, $2 billion investment in China. The three plants will create 2,000 new jobs in the area. In September, Coca-Cola pledged $1 billion to the Philippines over five years.

http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/us_overseas_hiring

[Hannah Bell]

1. GM's workforce in China is about the same as its US workforce. Growing there,

dwindling here.

[OHdem10]

2. Free Trade Policy (past 30 yrs) have encouraged Businesses

to travel the world in search of cheapest labor.
Cheap Labor means higher profits and therefore higher
Incomes for the Elites and Investors.

With poor management of Trade, essentially all companies
"left" the US and gave the Working Class the Shaft.

"Our Leaders" made a conscious decision along the
way to make this country into a Service Economy.
Guess what--this created the collapse.

Some very smart Economists and Business People have
said, Our country cannot be sustained with a Sefvice
economy. Our country is simply too large and too
populated to be supported and sustained by Tourism
and Service Economy. Welcome to Third World America.

[LongTomH]

3. This is a great paragraph.................

Harvard Business School Dean Nitin Nohria worries that the trend could be dangerous. In an article in the November issue of the Harvard Business Review, he says that if U.S. businesses keep prospering while Americans are struggling, business leaders will lose legitimacy in society. He exhorted business leaders to find a way to link growth with job creation at home.

I've got news for you, Dean Nohria, business leaders have already lost legitimacy! :grr: