Miraclewhip asks for an explanation:
The number of women who will never work outside the home is not negligible, but I didn’t quibble by choosing a ratio like 0.75 women : 1 man. It wouldn’t have mattered even if I did, because I was making a comparison between two ratios, 1 American female : 1 American male vs. 1 X ORDERS of MAGNITUDE foreign workers to whom US jobs have been outsourced to countries employing slave, child, or extremely cheap labor : 1 male worker.
I am puzzled why people here keep ignoring the fact that women in the workplace is a drop in the bucket compared to the impact of mass exporting of jobs. Maybe I’m just stupid, or missing something, but I honestly wish someone would show me what that something is.
No, you’re not stupid, because this is a relevant point and a very good question. And yet, it is easily answered by one of superior intellect and a modicum of research. Given that I speak three languages, you didn’t really think I’m completely unaware of that concept which goes by the misnomer “globalization”, did you? As for what you’re missing, the first clue is the US unemployment rate, which is closer to historic lows than historic highs.
Note the following from an article on Chinese exports: “Exporting footwear creates millions of jobs for citizens who lack sophisticated skills. According to some reports, a total of 34 million export-related jobs have been created in China, with exports to the U.S. alone accounting for over 20 million jobs in the last decade.”
Now, Americans are still wearing shoes, so those imported shoes definitely cost some American jobs, but not as many as you might think. 20 million Chinese jobs do not equate to 20 million lost American jobs, because the productivity of the machine-assisted American worker is much higher.
Productivity is notoriously difficult to calculate, but if we use the simplest possible national estimate, GDP/civilian worker, it’s clear that even today, the American worker annually produces about $86,000 ($11.75 trillion/136.49 million) in value.* By comparison, if we assume that a similar percentage of the Chinese population is employed in the labor force – if anyone has an actual statistic, let me know and we’ll plug it in – that indicates the average Chinese worker produces $212.77 annually, (1.21 trillion/568.7 million). This would put the number of American footwear manufacturing jobs lost at 49,500 if Chinese productivity had been at its current levels since 1970… which it hasn’t, having quadrupled since 1978. So, the actual number of American jobs lost to these 20 million Chinese workers is probably somewhere around 20k to 25k.
Now keep in mind that the entire Indian IT market is smaller than this single Chinese footwear market, while the same productivity math applies. The American labor force is bleeding and this certainly may portend trouble for the future, but it’s still more akin to a nasty cut on the hand, not a hemmorhage, and fails to account for the greater part of the historical decline in wages. These job losses are certainly not nothing, but their cumulative effect is still a relatively small one when compared to 21 million immigrants and 34 million women entering what was a workforce of 78 million in 30 years.
*This analysis is simplistic and fatally flawed by the fact that GDP measures consumption, not production, but the two have been commonly used as equivalents in Keynesian macroeconomics for fifty years, so bear with me. Also, that’s a 2004 GDP figure and 2002 labor force. But the numbers are available and they suffice to clarify the relevant issue here.