What Causes Manufacturing Job Losses?
Outsourcing, offshoring, NAFTA, technological advances, weak domestic advancement, poor education, competitive factors, imports and trade inequities are all possible reasons advanced by economists and politicians. According to McKinsey & Co., a New York-based consulting firm, about 314,000 or 11 percent of manufacturing job losses in 2005 were due to a decline in exports. This number is a drop in the bucket compared to the millions of new or lost jobs each year. “The real causes of job losses were weak domestic demand, rapid productivity growth and the dollar’s strength, which dampened U.S. exports. Real solutions [include] stimulating domestic demand, cutting the [U.S.] budget deficit and pushing countries with artificially cheap currencies to let them appreciate against the dollar.” NAFTA didn’t make a dent in the U.S. manufacture job losses. The National Association of Manufacturers claims that “U.S. exports to the NAFTA regions [have] increased, effecting job growth, not job losses
