I certainly agree that the economic analysis of the video is not exhaustive, and ignores a lot of the multiplier complexities of trade and exports in a number of industries. Sure, you get multiplier effects from jobs created in other countries, which is one major factor that makes trade deals desirable. And I agree that competing forces are partly responsible for the situation we are in now. But, another salient detail about the consequences of the export of manufacturing jobs to the domestic economy is that, compared to other kinds of jobs, manufacturing jobs have high multipliers. In addition to that, in what is directly pertinent to the production of iPhones, as manufacturing jobs get exported, so do designers' jobs. In fact, in Isaacson's recent biography of Steve Jobs, it was reported that Jobs, in advocating for more targeted education spending, actually complained to Obama about the surfeit of engineers that were being produced by the U.S., and thus the need to hire more factory workers in China and send designers there to direct them. I guess the ultimate point that the video was driving at, in an overly simplistic way, is that one feature of our present employment problem in the U.S. has to do with a rising number of service workers, with low wages and mobility on one end of the employment spectrum, and highly skilled and well-paid workers on the other, with dwindling manufacturing jobs that otherwise would have high domestic multipliers--to demonstrate what effects this situation has on class mobility in the labor market.
But as I said jobs created through the multiplier of manufacturing jobs benefit the United States approximately the same if they are here or there. So if you are looking at the multiplier on manufacturing jobs what you want is the *most manufacturing jobs created in the world* not the *most created here*. And I mean that purely by looking at multiplier and not anything else. So there is no such thing as a "domestic multiplier"(at least not on any scale your thinking and its net on net worse than having more total in the world).
Think about it if this is your current employment numbers in a particular industry domestically:
- I------------------------------------------I manufacturing
- I---------------------------I domestic resources tied to those products
- I-----------------------------------------------I Trucking, transportation, distribution
- I---------------------------------------I sales and retail
- I----------I management and corporate servicing
- I---------I marketing and PR
- I-----------I industry contribution towards ancillary service jobs such as janitorial, utilities, accounting, IT, etc. and many other areas that account for general overhead
- I--------I miscellaneous.
Now lets say we completely wipe out manufacturing by moving it overseas, but the price difference of units causes a 3+ times increase in demand and therefore a tripling of the supply over several years. Well
-I--x--x--x--x--x--x--x--x--x--x--x--x--x--x--x--x--x--x--x--x--x--x--x--x--x--x--x--x--x--x--x--x--I Manufacturing jobs now overseas and without benefit to American workers or labor markets
- I--------------------------------------I Domestic resources
- I----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------I Trucking, transportation and distribution
- I------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------I sales and retail
- I-------------------------I management and corporate servicing
- I--------------------------------I marketing and PR
- I----------------------------I ancillary services
- I---------------------------I Misc.
And this all before taking into account that when a buyer saves money on buying something he then has more discretionary money left over to buy from other industries boosting their earning power so they can expand their supply.
The amazing thing is that the power of job and earnings multipliers still isn't enough to overcome a 6 fold increase in the supply of labor overnight(appr. 1 billion people to 6 billion people over night) and that large of a supply increase is a huge pressure downward on wages and a huge pressure on unemployment. For the time being that pressure is much stronger than the job multiplier.
I mean if your city increased in size 6 fold in the matter of a year do you think that it would be a good or bad outcome for your wages? I mean a small increase of even 10% a year probably wouldn't affect your job, salary, or anything. But a 600% increase in 1 year is going to. And its going to take a long time for the market to catch up to that large of a labor supply increase.