Import Competition and the Great U.S. Employment Sag of the 2000s

60 Pages Posted: 29 Jun 2015

See all articles by Daron Acemoglu

Daron Acemoglu

Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) - Department of Economics; Centre for Economic Policy Research (CEPR); National Bureau of Economic Research (NBER)

David H. Autor

Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) - Department of Economics; National Bureau of Economic Research (NBER); IZA Institute of Labor Economics

David Dorn

University of Zurich - Department of Economics; Centre for Economic Policy Research (CEPR); IZA Institute of Labor Economics; CESifo (Center for Economic Studies and Ifo Institute)

Gordon H. Hanson

University of California, San Diego (UCSD) - Graduate School of International Relations and Pacific Studies (IRPS); National Bureau of Economic Research (NBER)

Brendan M. Price

Board of Governors of the Federal Reserve System

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Date Written: June 2015

Abstract

Even before the Great Recession, U.S. employment growth was unimpressive. Between 2000 and 2007, the economy gave back the considerable employment gains achieved during the 1990s, with a historic contraction in manufacturing employment being a prime contributor to the slump. We estimate that import competition from China, which surged after 2000, was a major force behind both recent reductions in U.S. manufacturing employment and-through input-output linkages and other general equilibrium channels-weak overall U.S. job growth. Our central estimates suggest job losses from rising Chinese import competition over 1999 through 2011 in the range of 2.0 to 2.4 million.

Keywords: labor demand, trade flows

JEL Classification: F16, J21

Suggested Citation

Acemoglu, Daron and Autor, David H. and Dorn, David and Hanson, Gordon H. and Price, Brendan M., Import Competition and the Great U.S. Employment Sag of the 2000s (June 2015). CEPR Discussion Paper No. DP10677, Available at SSRN: https://ssrn.com/abstract=2624632

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David Dorn

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Gordon H. Hanson

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