Which brings up a hole in this story: It doesn’t tell us anything about outsourcing overseas. I’m guessing that the 2.9 million number the Journal uses is for actual corporate employees and that it doesn’t include suicidal Foxconn workers snapping iPhones together in China for Apple Incorporated. But the paper doesn’t say. If I’m right, the numbers are even worse, though it’s possible that would make that U.S. job cuts numbers look better by counting work outsourced here.
But there’s lots of stuff to chew on here. Including this about Oracle:
Oracle, which makes business hardware and software, added twice as many workers overseas over the past five years as in the U.S. At the beginning of the 2000s, it had more workers at home than abroad; at the end of 2010, 63% of its employees were overseas. The company says it still does 80% of its R&D in the U.S.
Larry Ellison might as well be that prototypical CEO I talked about a few paragraphs up. His compensation from 2000 to 2009 while he was shifting jobs abroad? A cool $1.8 billion.
The "net loss" is more like 500,000 jobs, Ryan, not 5.3 million. Other than that I concur.
#1 Posted by edward ericson jr., CJR on Mon 25 Apr 2011 at 02:14 PM
If you're talking about a "net loss" of US jobs, then the number is 2.9 million. If you assume that each and every overseas job created is a direct replacement of a job that otherwise would have been in the US, then the "net loss of US jobs attributable to overseas hiring" is 2.4 million jobs. The "global net loss" irrespective of the country is the 500,000 figure.
In any case, you can't add the 2.4 million in overseas jobs to the 2.9 million figure. That's double counting.
#2 Posted by JLD, CJR on Mon 25 Apr 2011 at 11:09 PM