Interesting...

The article was the amount of actual jobs reported moved out of the country. Jobs like Kwikset & Black & Decker both in Oklahoma going to Mexico & taking about 3000 jobs with them. This number was from a Barrons story as well as a local paper & I had also read in in the Wall Street Journal some time back. I understand your questions. It's like the unemployment numbers, just those on unemployment, not those out of work. This number would include all new businesses formed & moved, companies with new work sent over seas, & companies like Boeing( [img]/phpBB/images/smiles/icon_mad.gif[/img] ) that tend to just ship them out of the country to begin with.
[addsig]

Lies, Damn Lies and Statistics.

A local example: The city likes to tout the low unemployment rate here - 3.7% in December. Sounds good eh? Well...

1) it's low because the people that can't get jobs leave. Most people that had a good job that went out from under them (lots of plants closed in the last 3 years) moved to Lubbock, Austin, Ft. Worth, Dallas, Wichita Falls. There are people here that COMMUTE to Dallas - 200 miles! Count the people between ages 22 and 55 - there aren't many of us. 3 universities here and the first thing the kids do is leave town - not many bust it for 4 years so they can work at the mall or answer the phone at a plumbing company.

2) low unemployment scares relocating companies. They worry about being able to hire people without having to do the "eBay thing" with salaries. But we have lots here that don't go to the unemployment office - so they don't count in any stats. Many get military retirement and then pick at doing things or act as "independent contractors".

In doing some research ... and granted there are likely some nuances I can not take into account ... but according to labor statistics ... of our approximate 300 Million people in America, the following were employed ... by year.

1997 ... 131 million
1998 ... 131 million
1999 ... 133 million
2000 ... 135 million
2001 ... 137 million
2002 ... 137 million

If you total up all the folks employed in America for each year, you get less than a billion (804 million) total people employed and that (I'm sure) is counting the vast majority of them six times (once each year.)

In order for there to be 2.9 billion jobs lost since 1997 ... each and every one of these employed people would have to work more than three jobs each, then every single job in America would have to be lost every year ...

Can someone tell or show me how this 2.9 Billion jobs lost since 1997 is plausible?[img]/phpBB/images/smiles/icon_confused.gif[/img]

As a side note ... scale shows 4 million more people employed since GWB took office ... we don't hear much about that ... do we [img]/phpBB/images/smiles/icon_wink.gif[/img]
[addsig]

Maybe that 2.9 Billion should be Million (you know how big a BILLION is anyway???)? Looks like we gained them all back plus some, since GWB took office.

<TABLE BORDER=0 ALIGN=CENTER WIDTH=85%><TR><TD><font size=-1>Quote:</font><HR></TD></TR><TR><TD><FONT SIZE=-1><BLOCKQUOTE>
On 2004-02-17 10:45, ckelly wrote:
There are people here that COMMUTE to Dallas - 200 miles! Count the people between ages 22 and 55 - there aren't many of us. 3 universities here and the first thing the kids do is leave town - not many bust it for 4 years so they can work at the mall or answer the phone at a plumbing company.

</BLOCKQUOTE></FONT></TD></TR><TR><TD><HR></TD></TR></TABLE>

And I thought it was bad that people here in Lancaster/Palmdale area commute to LA to work!! That's only like 90-100 miles and depending on where it could be closer or further.
I agree with the people moving out of state figures into the unemployment percentages also.

Deb