Imports from China have cost the United States a lot of jobs—3.2 million of them between 2001 and 2013. And Walmart accounted for around 415,000 of those lost jobs, a new report from the Economic Policy Institute estimates. That’s 13.2 percent of the jobs lost to Chinese imports that can be attributed to Walmart.
- The manufacturing sector and its workers have been hardest hit by the growth of Wal-Mart’s imports. Wal-Mart’s increased trade deficit with China between 2001 and 2013 eliminated 314,500 manufacturing jobs, 75.7 percent of the jobs lost from Wal-Mart’s trade deficit. These job losses are particularly destructive because jobs in the manufacturing sector pay higher wages and provide better benefits than most other industries, especially for workers with less than a college education.
- Wal-Mart has announced plans to create opportunities for American manufacturing by “investing in American jobs.” To date, very few actual U.S. jobs have been created by this program, and since 2001, the growing Wal-Mart trade deficit with China has displaced more than 100 U.S. jobs for every actual or promised job created through this program.
Walmart says this is totes unfair because it’s based on estimates (since Walmart’s own data is a secret) and Walmart creates all sorts of other jobs, the low pay of which we should ignore.