WASHINGTON -- The movement of U.S. factory jobs and white-collar work to other countries is part of a positive transformation that will enrich the U.S. economy over time, even if it causes short-term pain and dislocation, the Bush administration said yesterday.
The embrace of foreign "outsourcing," an accelerating trend that has contributed to U.S. job losses in recent years and become an issue in the 2004 elections, is contained in the president's annual report to Congress on the health of the U.S. economy.
"Outsourcing is just a new way of doing international trade," said N. Gregory Mankiw, chairman of Bush's Council of Economic Advisors, which prepared the report. "More things are tradable than were tradable in the past. And that's a good thing."
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Last month there were 21,000 jobs created in the U.S. (U.S. Department of Labor) and not a SINGLE one of those jobs was in the private sector, they were all government related. The current unemployment rate in the U.S. is calculated as 5.6% in Feb 2004 which is modest, however if you factor in people who are no longer receiving unemployment or are no longer looking that figure raises to just under 10%.
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