Cheap Imports and the Loss of U.S. Manufacturing Jobs
Author | : Abigail Cooke |
Publisher | : |
Total Pages | : 26 |
Release | : 2016 |
ISBN-10 | : OCLC:1016880245 |
ISBN-13 | : |
Rating | : 4/5 (45 Downloads) |
Book excerpt: This paper examines the role of international trade, and specifically imports from low-wage countries, in determining patterns of job loss in U.S. manufacturing industries between 1992 and 2007. Motivated by intuitions from factor-proportions-inspired work on offshoring and heterogeneous firms in trade, we build industry-level measures of import competition. Combining worker data from the Longitudinal Employer-Household Dynamics dataset, detailed establishment information from the Census of Manufactures, and transaction-level trade data, we find that rising import competition from China and other developing economies increases the likelihood of job loss among manufacturing workers with less than a high school degree; it is not significantly related to job losses for workers with at least a college degree.