The massive global job shift

Posted November 11, 2003 to Pakistan category.

The common view of globalization is that the jobs have been flying south to the poorer countries, as this article below shows:

Hundreds of thousands of jobs in the North are being exported to the South in an unprecedentedly frenzied manner to maximize profits by cutting costs in terms of wages, in cases even by half, by the corporate sector.

...George Monbiot of The Guardian in one of his recent columns has described these jobs as the ones "we (British colonialists) stole 200 years ago" and are now "returning to India". In an apologetic vein, by drawing upon his country's colonial history, he says: "Britain's industrialization was secured by destroying the manufacturing capacity of India... So a historical restitution appears to be taking place as hundreds of thousands of jobs, many of them good ones, flee to the economy we ruined". But it is not because of the historic injustices the West did to Asia that corporate giants are willing to offer too many jobs to Indians as a compensation so as to settle the old score. It is the naked lust for profits that is whipping up the new trend
>> Dawn: The massive global job shift

Many people in the west have the misperception that their jobs are being somehow 'transferred' to poeple in China and the rest of the developing world. While jobs are disappearing, as the quote below shows, it is not just a simple transer operation. From Daniel Drezner:

America has been losing manufacturing jobs to China, Latin America and the rest of the developing world. Right? Well, not quite. It turns out that manufacturing jobs have been disappearing all over the world. Economists at Alliance Capital Management in New York took a close look at employment trends in 20 large economies recently, and found that since 1995 more than 22 million factory jobs have disppeared.

In fact, the United States has not even been the biggest loser. Between 1995 and 2002, we lost about 11 percent of our manufacturing jobs. But over the same period, the Japanese lost 16 percent of theirs. And get this: Many developing nations are losing factory jobs. During those same years, Brazil suffered a 20 percent decline.

Here's the real surprise. China saw a 15 percent drop. China, which is fast becoming the manufacturing capital of the world, has been losing millions of factory jobs.

What's going on? In two words: Higher productivity.
>> TomPaine.com: Welcome to the Machines

As Drezner said, fascinating.

One of our more interesting findings is that, taken on its own, China's job losses are double the average of the remaining 17 countries* for the same seven-year period. Manufacturing employment in the 17 largest economies other than China fell a little more than 7%, from 96 million in 1995 to 89 million in 2002. In contrast, China's fell a whopping 15% in the period, from 98 million in 1995 to 83 million in 2002.

Notwithstanding the continuous influx of foreign investment and new employment, China has been unable to escape the drive toward productivity enhancement and the resultant downsizing of the manufacturing workforce. In 2002 alone, although nearly 2 million factory jobs were created, China's manufacturing employment level for the year was below 1998 and far below 1995.

Global competition has forced domestic firms to relocate offshore in order to remain competitive. But in a recent survey of domestic corrugated box makers, 40% indicated that the relocation of domestic manufacturing plants to overseas locations has caused a reduction in revenues in this cycle.
>> Manufacturing Payrolls Declining Globally: The Untold Story

Agriculture makes up hardly 3 percent of jobs in the North, down from over 50 percent not so long ago. In the near future, manufacturing jobs well also be well below 10 percent.

Even in Pakistan, this trend is starting. The textile industry has been investing heavily in new machinery in preparation for 2005, when the quota system is abolished and countries will have to start competeting on the basis of quality and price. With new machinery comes higher production, better quality, and a lot fewer people. The textile industry is the biggest in Pakistan and growing, yet it is going to lose jobs.

More about Globalization

links will be added as found

Leave a comment