Estimating the Impact of Trade and Offshoring on American Workers Using the Current Population Surveys

Avraham Ebenstein, Ann E. Harrison, Margaret Mcmillan () and Shannon Phillips

No 15107, NBER Working Papers from National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc

Abstract: In this paper, we link industry-level data on offshoring activities of U.S. multinational firms, import penetration, and export shares with individual level worker data from the Current Population Surveys. We examine whether increasing globalization through offshoring or trade has led to reallocation of labor, both within and out of manufacturing, and measure its impact on the wages of domestic workers. We also control for the “routineness” of individual occupations. Our results suggest that (1) offshoring to high wage countries is positively correlated with U.S. manufacturing employment (2) offshoring to low wage countries is associated with U.S. employment declines (3) wages for workers who remain in manufacturing are generally positively affected by offshoring; in particular, we find that wages are positively associated with an increase in U.S. multinational employment in high income locations (4) much of the negative effects of globalization operate through downward pressure on wages of workers who leave manufacturing to take jobs in agriculture or services and (5) the downward pressure on aggregate U.S. wages operating through import competition has been quite important for some occupations. This effect has been overlooked because it operates across, not within, industries.

JEL-codes: F15 F16 F23 J23 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
New Economics Papers: this item is included in nep-int and nep-lab
Date: 2009-06
Note: EEE ITI
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Working Paper: Estimating the Impact of Trade and Offshoring on American Workers Using the Current Population Surveys (2009)
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