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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