China is stealing American jobs. Labor unions, politicians and economists have used this accusation for some time. The logic is simple. While a manufacturing job in the U.S. may pay $50 an hour, when salary and benefits are factored in, Chinese factory laborers make little more than a few hundred dollars a month.
With American companies moving operations to China and international companies preferring the cheaper Chinese-made goods, the Economic Policy Institute found the U.S. lost 2.8 million jobs to China in the past decade. While all states have been affected, 24/7 Wall St. looked at the ten states that lost the most jobs to China.
Over the past decade, American imports from China have grown much more than what the country has been able to export into it, causing a massive loss of jobs. "Between 2001 and 2010, the trade deficit with China eliminated or displaced 2.8 million jobs," the EPI noted in a paper released this month. As would be expected, 1.9 million of those jobs, or nearly 70 percent, were in manufacturing, the EPI found. The greatest damage occurred in the computer and electronic parts industry, as well as several finished manufactured goods sectors such as apparel and motor vehicles and parts.
