Where the Jobs Went

The Skeptical Optimist offers a “Bar Chart of Where the Jobs Went” – i.e. changes in the number of jobs by category over the last year. That is followed by a chart of “Where the Jobs Went” inluding average pay by sector. The bottom line:

Looks to me like the manufacturing job reductions were more than replaced by new, higher-paying jobs right here in the USA. There are 1.57 million extra jobs in our economy versus one year ago. So, if it’s true that we “sent” 0.17 million manufacturing jobs “overseas,” that means 1.74 million new jobs had to come from somewhere. Could foreign countries be exporting more jobs to us than we’re sending to them? In other words, do we have a huge trade surplus in jobs? (And if so, why are talking heads like Lou Dobbs and Pat Buchanan not telling us about it?) Anyway, that’s not the case; those new jobs are mostly the result of homeland economic growth—another important point we hardly ever hear from the doom peddlers.