Job Exports

   Political candidates, especially those from the conservative right wing, loudly lament the loss of "good American jobs" to overseas competitors.
   A high irony is that the shift of well paying skilled manufacturing jobs to other countries was undertaken by the same conservative right wing corporate executives in search of higher profits who now criticize the transfer of manufacturing that they themselves initiated.
   Perhaps they want these jobs brought back but at the same low wage scales that prevailed nearly 100 years ago.
   One reality, however, is that many jobs cannot be exported. These include well paying skilled jobs like carpenters, plumbers, construction workers, auto mechanics and other trades that can only be done locally. Also retail sales, building maintenance and landscaping. Also transportation jobs like trucking, railroading, bus driving and airlines. Also higher skill jobs like science, technology, engineering and mathematics (STEM). Also teaching. Also hotel staff. Also jobs in journalism, ranging from reporting, writing and editing to advertising sales and support staff, to printers and press room personnel to delivery truck drivers and distribution workers to home delivery carriers. And that's just in the newspaper field. Add to that magazine and book publishers and editors. Let's not forget postal service workers, police, fire and security personnel and many government sector jobs.
   Don't forget broadcasting and telecommunications, including radio, television, information technology and Internet support staff who feed media web sites.
   The list goes on. Many jobs, then, cannot be exported.
   Other jobs can, however, and many of those are indeed manufacturing jobs. But they are not all high skill, high wage jobs. In fact, they are the reverse, and American consumers benefit as the stuff made in other countries becomes available at lower retail cost.
   Moreover, American success has contributed to this transfer of low wage, low skill jobs to other countries. As wages in America increased, firms looked to other regions where labor was abundant and wages were lower. Not only do American consumers benefit from lower prices at retail, but workers in other regions benefit by having jobs to support their families. And this ability to stay home keeps families together and reduces emigration.
   There's nothing new about this pattern, even within America itself. In the 19th Century, New England was a leader in textile manufacturing. Cheap labor was available, and there were plenty of streams and rivers to power the mills. Later, as labor costs rose, owners moved their facilities to the Carolinas and converted the mills to engines powered by coal. This move brought them closer to the coal mines, as well as to the cotton growers, so transportation costs were cut.  Meanwhile, mechanization also came to the farms, which left more workers available for the mills, and at lower wages than those in New England.
   The loss of jobs in the North was as much due to advances in technology as it was to wages.
   So it was also in the 20th Century. New York City saw the demise of its renowned Garment District in Manhattan, where generations of newcomers to America found steady work at good wages, a situation not available to them in their home countries. If it had been, they would not have left.
   The Land of Opportunity enabled the children of these newcomers to become better education and to learn higher skills, so they moved on from the Garment District on the path to higher salaries.
   Here it's good to remember that several of the current presidential candidates are themselves sons or grandsons of immigrants.
   Meanwhile, American growth and success, coupled with abundant labor and lower wages in other countries, meant garment making left New York.
   Variations on this set of circumstances, along with other contributing factors, benefited both the older regions of America that have outgrown manufacturing as well s the emerging economies that can supply garments and other products at lower cost even as it offers employment and prosperity to those in need.
   All that said, however, there are still many jobs available in America for newcomers, often the low skill, minimum wage jobs that many Americans don't want. It is a hypocrisy to criticize the influx of workers taking jobs that the critics themselves refuse to fill, and give their children monetary allowances rather than see them work at these jobs.
   So the campaign slogan that promises to "take back" jobs lost to other countries is based on a false premise, because the jobs that moved away were often low skill, low wage positions that Americans would not want even if they did come back. Which they won't.