Due to the press of business yesterday we didn't get a chance to do justice to Bob Samuelson's piece about the big nothing sandwich that is outsourcing. You'll recall that this was the big John Kerry/Lou Dobbs issue of the campaign of 2004. But once the election was over, mentions of the word in the mainstream press dropped precipitously, showing the issue for what it was -- a political, not an economic phenomenon.
Samuelson in his piece cites the recent work of Jacob Funk Kirkegaard of the Peterson Institute. Kirkegaard studied the impact of outsourcing on US, EU and Asian employment. His conclusion? "Data for the United States, EU-15, and Japan indicate only a limited impact of offshoring/outsourcing on employment in the three regions. Correspondingly, developing Asia is unlikely to experience large employment gains as an offshoring/outsourcing destination region. "
