Tuesday, August 23, 2011
Jeffrey Immelt and Barack Obama (AP Photo)
It is one of the most guarded statistics in corporate America today: the number of jobs available overseas versus the total within the United States.
Many large companies refuse to divulge their figures to the U.S. government, including Hewlett-Packard, AT&T, Apple, Pfizer and Procter & Gamble.
But that hasn’t stopped some of them from asking Congress for tax breaks to foster domestic job growth, even though lawmakers don’t have a clear picture of what corporations have done to shift American jobs to foreign countries.
Collectively, U.S. multinationals cut 2.9 million jobs in the United States and added 2.4 million overseas between 2000 and 2009.
In 2009, IBM stopped reporting its domestic/international employment numbers—the same year that the corporation had more employees in India than the U.S. for the first time, according to Dave Finegold, dean of the Rutgers School of Management and Labor Relations.
Less than half of General Electric’s employees now work in the United States. Yet President Barack Obama chose GE CEO Jeffrey Immelt to head his Council on Jobs and Competitiveness.
-David Wallechinsky
Corporations Pushing for Job-Creation Tax Breaks Shield U.S.-vs.-Abroad Hiring Data (by Jia Lynn Yang, Washington Post)
Big U.S. Corporations Moving Jobs out of United States (by Noel Brinkerhoff, AllGov)
Why Did Obama Choose Outsourcing Champion Jeffrey Immelt as Jobs Advisor? (by Noel Brinkerhoff, AllGov)
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