Large U.S. companies increasingly hire abroad and fire in America, according to new government data.
In the last decade, American multinational corporations, which together employ one-fifth of all U.S. workers, decreased domestic employment by 2.9 million workers while adding 2.4 million jobs overseas, the Commerce Department reported on Monday.
In 2009, a devastating year for the global economy, U.S. multinational companies' worldwide employment shrunk by 4.1 percent to 31.3 million workers. But the cuts were much sharper at home than abroad. Domestic employment by the same companies shrunk by 5.3 percent, leaving 21.1 million with jobs, while their overseas counterparts lost 1.5 percent of their workforce, with 10.3 million still employed.
"Emerging markets [are] growing at two-and-a-half times the speed of industrialized countries, which has made it imperative for companies to look abroad for opportunities," said Lynn Reaser, chief economist at Point Loma Nazarene University in San Diego.
For large American multinationals, the geopraphical calculus is simple: Follow the money.
"[The report] is not surprising at all. It is harder and harder for companies in the U.S. to find the right skilled labor at the right price point," said Dave Niles, president of SSA &Co, a global operations consulting firm.
Construction titan Caterpillar, with a market cap of $67 billion, has added more jobs abroad than in the U.S. -- a result of their sales growing faster overseas than at home, spokesman Jim Dugan told the Wall Street Journal
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