Why Are We Losing Jobs and Are Created Overseas?
Last year I purchased a HP Netbook through Costco for a friend, the entire process was completely transparent to me, but the product was shipped directly from the manufacturer in China to the US, including the packaging, billing and customs handled by FedEx. In this case FedEx used their China facilities to prepackage the product, labeled and scanned to the final destination, so no handling was required here except for the normal package delivery through their network.
Unemployment is at a record high of 9.5% in the US, and the outlook is not promising. Meanwhile companies in China are hiring people to manufacture products for American companies.
It is true that the cost of producing items like clothing, plastics, furniture are very different in Asia comparing to the Western world. But what about high tech devices such as computers, cell phones, tablets? In this case the cost of labor is a very small part of the price.
Apple, Dell and HP are a big offender: recently Foxconn, the largest IT Chinese manufacturer, announced that will hire 400,000 more workers in different regions of China to meet the demand, mostly for the iPhone, the iPad and Dell and HP notebooks. This will make Foxconn one of the largest employers in the world, with over 1.2 million people, mostly on manufacturing jobs.
The sad part is that the US is no longer able to take those manufacturing orders. It will take several months, or years, for any turn-key producer in the US to prepare sufficient production lines to take those orders. China is ready to take more work and they are flexible in production and automation for any high tech product.
Would American consumers pay another $5-$10 for an iPhone, iPad or notebook to see the “Made in USA” label? I believe so. I also believe the Stimulus Packages from the government should go in that direction.
But American consumers got used to cheap products from overseas, and companies like Apple are not going to risk a percent of their stock price to solve the problem.
Something has to change!
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