DeLauro Bill Tracks Outsourcing of American Jobs
DeLauro Bill Tracks Outsourcing of American Jobs
In an information age where government data serves a critical role in measuring the strength or weakness of our economy, Congresswoman Rosa L. DeLauro (Conn.-3) introduced legislation that seeks to improve our tracking of the outsourcing of American jobs. The current data collection system lacks the resources to adequately determine where and if jobs have been sent off-shore or outsourced.
"At a time when wages have been stagnant for five years, when costs for everything from health care to the price of a gallon of gas are rising and the middle class is feeling more and more squeezed, the government has a responsibility to track where jobs are going and why," said DeLauro. "We must understand the true impact of off-shoring & outsourcing and chart a balanced approach to deal with it. This legislation takes some critical first steps to help us accomplish that."
Two years ago, in a widely quoted report, Forrester Research estimated that 3.3 million service jobs would be outsourced between 2000 and 2015an average of 55,000 jobs outsourced per quarter. Another study reported that more than $136 billion in wages would be sent overseas in the next 15 years. Yet, not one of these figures was provided by the federal government. Instead, we relied, and continue to, on anecdotal information and research performed by private firms without any way of verification.
"The Understanding Off-shoring and Outsourcing Act of 2006" includes several provisions that would allow us to better measure and evaluate the outsourcing and off-shoring of public and private sector business operations and services. Among the highlights:
· Requires the Department of Commerce's Bureau of Economic Analysis (BEA) to lower by fifty percent the thresholds for mandatory reporting of international services transaction - While the BEA surveys that ask firms to quantify their trade in services is mandatory, firms are exempted from reporting categories of services in which they have import transactions of less than $6 million per year and export transactions of less than $8 million per year. In the case of services, in particular, because firms tend to be smaller than firms engaged in goods trade, the current thresholds very likely exclude many transactions.
· Reduce Extended Mass Layoff Survey - This survey contains a question on movement of work and currently Department of Labor's Bureau of Labor Statistics only surveys those businesses which lay off 50 or more workers. A reduction in the companies surveyed which lay off 25 workers or more would increase the share of the offshore outsourcing instances reported.
· Disaggregate Data on Movement of Work - BLS would be require to disaggregate and report separately detailed data on the "movement of work" movement of work to another location inside the U.S. versus movement of work to another location outside the U.S. Detailed date to be reported could include distribution of layoffs by industry or region.
· The Bureau of Labor Statistics should publish consistent time series on employment by occupation from the Occupational Employment Statistics (OES) program. To the extent possible, these data should be published by industry, at the national, state, and metropolitan levels.
· BLS and BEA should conduct a joint-study on whether the linkage of their independent data sets would improve the quality of data on outsourcing and off-shoring. BEA collects critical information on multinational corporations, and BLS collects occupational and movement of work data. The study shall be completed no later than18 months after enactment of the bill.
· Authorize $10 million to implement these changes and develop new surveys, if necessary
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