05.16.12
Outsourcing eclipsed insourcing
Who in Congress is feeling twinges from their conscience? Which men or women among them feel they should be doing something in this time of great need? Some members keep making requests for data crunches on various facets of our economic and national failure — like the youth labor market and corporate outsourcing — from the Congressional Research Service. And since the CRS is unfailingly honest in such matters, it has produced useful information, over which absolutely no action will be taken. Because the Republican Party, as everyone knows, abhors facts and information.
I know this because Steve Aftergood at Secrecy Blog keeps making a plethora of CRS reports available to the general public. Congress does not release them and, indeed, it does not want other Americans to see them.
Among the latest published at Secrecy Blog is one entitled “Outsourcing and Insourcing Jobs in the U.S. Economy: Evidence Based on Foreign Investment Data.”
There is now widespread implicit knowledge that oursourcing has been very bad for Americans. But absolutely rock hard data, illustrated nicely, is always very good to have. If only because it is inarguable.
Two figures give one the gist of the CRS report on outsourcing. They are damning.
Outsourcing has not been offset by a 1-to-1 level in foreign return investment into hiring in the US. Also, US corporate multinational outsourcing has remained inexorable and constant over the last ten years, dipping or leveling only when a recession has occurred, or a global economic collapse. That is, it is no different now than at the beginning of the last decade when it really took off.
Readers will notice how the practice of shipping jobs overseas accelerated at the beginning of the last decade. The slope of the line has remained fairly constant with leveling occurring in the middle of the decade when the Bush administration put the country into a recession. It also plunged upon the global economic collapse brought on by Wall Street.
However, readers will also see how it had picked back up again slightly by 2009, while commensurate employment in the US itself was still plunging.
The second figure shows US corporate multinational foreign investment against outside investment into this country.
There is nothing particularly close to 1-to-1 balance after 2000. Jobs went overseas. The balance has always been negative for American labor with foreign return investment not making up the losses.
The report also notes that when the jobs and production lines go overseas, the value chains which include other related support industries also go with them. And are not replaced.
So who is requesting such reports and why? What is the point? Our leaders, and everyone else knows that at this juncture, no action will be taken, regardless of any findings or indications of ongoing calamity.
In e-mail, Steve Aftergood informs DD: “It’s entirely possible, even likely, that no one in Congress requested these reports and that they were self-initiated by the CRS analysts.”
So I could have been overly generous in my assessments. However, it is heartening that people of integrity and conscience work at CRS and are trying to contribute to the national debate.
Music to read a CRS report to. “You buy that toilet, it was made in China …”