Many Americans, influenced by US media, believe that their jobs are being stolen by competitors from China.

This opinion, which is widely bought by workers in manufacturing sectors, has great influence on the US Government.

In view of this, it is necessary to analyze the employment situation in the United States.

The transfer of traditional industries overseas constitutes one of the major reasons for job loss in the United States.

Expensive US labour costs have led to the shifting of primary manufacturing industries to other countries where the price of labour is much lower.

The core competitive edge of the US economy lies in technological innovation, service industries and high-tech manufacturing. Transferring traditional industries overseas helps the country focus on developing the industries in which it enjoys advantages over other economies.

This strategy can enhance its international competitive power as much as possible and also brings fat profits to US companies.

But workers in sectors that have become hollowed out have to look elsewhere for employment, and this is a major problem. When their old skills fail to meet the requirements of new posts, they face unemployment.

On the other hand, China is not the only country affected in this kind of industrial transfer.

The bulk of Chinese exports to the United States are labour-intensive products. If China stopped exporting such products to the United States, the Western nation would not engage in making these goods anyway. And other countries would fill the vacancy.

Scientific and technological progress and the increase of productivity have robbed many Americans of their jobs.

Since the beginning of the 1990s, US companies have invested heavily in IT, automation and artificial intelligence technologies, which have helped raise the productivity by large margins. But wide application of new technologies and the sharp enhancement of productivity have led to job redundancies.

Of course, there is still a huge demand for workers in newly emerging sectors. But the posts created by these new industries are less than the jobs lost in traditional sectors. This renders the employment pressure all the more serious.

In addition to those in traditional sectors, many US high-tech workers have also lost their jobs recently as a result of the bubble burst of high-tech shares on the stock market.

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