Work

The Surprisingly Swift Decline of U.S. Manufacturing Employment

Year: 2012

Type: report

Abstract: This paper finds a link between the sharp drop in U.S. manufacturing employment beginning in 2001 and a change in U.S. trade policy that eliminated potential tariff increases on Chinese imports.Industries where the threat of tariff hikes declines the most experience more severe employment losses along with larger increases in the value of imports from China and the number of firms engaged in China-U.S. trade.These results are robust to other potential explanations of the employment loss, and we show that the U.S. employment trends differ from those in the EU, where there was no change in policy.

Source: National Bureau of Economic Research

DOI: 10.3386/w18655

Authors: Justin Pierce, Peter Schott

Institutions: National Bureau of Economic Research, Federal Reserve Board of Governors, Yale University

Language: English

Topic: Global trade and economics

Subfield: General Economics, Econometrics and Finance

Field: Economics, Econometrics and Finance

Domain: Social Sciences

SDG: Decent work and economic growth

Open Access status: green

Funder: National Science Foundation