Wednesday, December 29, 2010

American Companies Have Created 1.4 Million Jobs This Year…

Unfortunately, they were all overseas.

According to an article in the Huffington Post, American companies created over half of the new jobs in Asia. With profits soaring and business sitting on cash, they are investing in new factories in other countries.
Job Market Booming Overseas For Many American Companies
Huffington Post
Pallavi Gogoi
12/28/10

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.
[…]
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.

"There's a huge difference between what is good for American companies versus what is good for the American economy," says Scott.
Do you remember the Republican argument for continuing the tax cuts to the billionaires? They said that it is the rich who are creating jobs, but what they didn’t say was that those jobs are overseas. In addition, thanks to the Supreme Court decision that allowed multinational corporations to sponsor political ads, the multinational corporations lobbied hard for the Republican candidates. The Washington Post reported that,
The 72 super PACs, all formed this year, together spent $83.7 million on the election. The figures provide the best indication yet of the impact of recent Supreme Court decisions that opened the door for wealthy individuals and corporations to give unlimited contributions.
[…]
Most of the donations from the financial industry went to interest groups attacking Democrats, the disclosure reports show.
The manufacturing jobs have moved overseas and now the research jobs are doing the same,
While most of DuPont's research labs are still stateside, Connelly [chief innovation officer at DuPont] says he's impressed with the company's overseas talent. The company opened a large research facility in Hyderabad, India, in 2008.
Before I retired, the company where I worked brought engineers over from eastern Europe to train them for our jobs and the company also sold our technology to South Korean and Chinese companies so what we were making here in the U.S. could be made over there by foreign companies.

Read this 2003 report from the Economic Policy Institute and tell me if what they wrote back then hasn’t come true.

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