STUDY SAYS U.S. EMPLOYMENT NOT JEOPARDIZED BY BORDER PLANTS
The growing shift of low-skilled
manufacturing jobs from the United States to Mexican border
cities is not a threat to American employment because it will
help create new markets for products, according to a study
released today.
    Richard Bolin, director of the Flagstaff Institute of
Arizona, which studies international trade issues, said the
United States needs to encourage the expansion of manufacturing
in developing countries so that those nations can become
consumers of more U.S. goods.
    His study was commissioned by the border city of McAllen,
Texas, for presentation to the International Trade Commission
which is gathering information for a report to Congress on what
changes may be needed in the U.S. tariff codes to prevent the
loss of jobs and industry.
    McAllen and other Texas border cities have benefitted from
a trend among U.S. companies to build twin plants that employ
factory workers on both sides of the U.S.-Mexico border.
    More than 700 manufacturers are taking advantage of lenient
tax codes that allow U.S. companies to bring raw goods into
Mexico for assembly by low-skilled workers into products that
are completed by U.S. workers at a nearby sister plant.
    Bolin said his research indicated that the shift in
low-paying jobs across the border reflected changing
demographics of the U.S. workforce.
    "In the post-baby boom era, fewer workers will be available
to fill these low-skill jobs -- and these workers will be
better educated than prior generations," Bolin told reporters in
McAllen.
    "The jobs in low-tech industries that are being exported to
other countries are, for the most part, jobs that we may not be
able to fill in the future."
    U.S. employment in less-skilled manufacturing jobs plunged
by more than 900,000 between 1977 and 1982, largely due to the
transfer of jobs outside U.S. borders, he said. American
employment in high-tech industries increased by 634,000 during
the same period, he said.
    But high-tech industries, those in which engineers make up
more than six percent of the workforce, pay higher wages and
generate more U.S. exports than low-tech businesses, he said.
 Reuter
