Cheap Imports and the Loss of U.S. Manufacturing Jobs
January 2016
Working Paper Number:
CES-16-05
Abstract
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.
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:
exogeneity,
endogeneity,
industrial,
manufacturing,
foreign trade,
import,
export,
international trade,
employ,
labor,
recession,
exporter,
immigrant,
importing,
multinational,
workforce,
industry heterogeneity,
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imported,
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Standard Industrial Classification,
Census of Manufactures,
Center for Economic Studies,
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Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development,
World Bank,
Chicago Census Research Data Center,
North American Industry Classification System,
Longitudinal Employer Household Dynamics,
Alfred P Sloan Foundation,
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