It’s always interesting when two smart people look at the same set of stats and draw very different conclusions.
At his blog Creative Class, best-selling author Richard Florida writes about the issue of globalization and concerns about the out-sourcing of U.S. jobs:
. . . Princeton economist and Obama adviser Alan Blinder argued [in 2006] that globalization would likely bring about a mass off-shoring of American jobs. Blinder later used Bureau of Labor Statistics data to estimate that some 30 to 40 million U.S. jobs, 22 to 29 percent of all, including significant numbers of jobs in knowledge work and high end services were “potentially off-shoreable.”
However, international economist Richard Baldwin examined the actual BLS data and reached a different conclusion — namely, that the U.S. is a net in-sourcer of jobs. I’m sure this debate will carry on.