How many jobs were lost to globalization?

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There is no single accepted number because globalization includes trade, offshoring, foreign competition, and international supply chains, and economists define it differently. However, there are well-supported estimates for its impact on U.S. employment.

Short answer

The best-known research concludes that:

• About 2.0–2.4 million U.S. jobs were lost or displaced because of trade with China between 1999 and 2011, with manufacturing accounting for most of the losses.  
• Looking only at manufacturing employment from 2000 to 2007, the “China Shock” is estimated to have eliminated roughly 1.5–2 million manufacturing jobs, representing about one-quarter of the decline in U.S. manufacturing employment during that period.  
• These losses were highly concentrated in manufacturing regions such as parts of the Midwest, Southeast, and Appalachia rather than being spread evenly across the country.  

Why estimates differ

Globalization both destroys and creates jobs.

It can eliminate jobs by:

• moving production overseas
• increasing import competition
• encouraging firms to relocate factories

It can also create jobs through:

• exports
• foreign investment
• lower consumer prices
• growth in industries that serve world markets

Because both effects occur simultaneously, economists often distinguish between gross job losses and net employment effects.

The “China Shock”

The most influential research on globalization’s employment effects comes from economists David Autor (MIT), David Dorn, and Gordon Hanson.

They found that rising imports from China after China entered the World Trade Organization had much larger effects than economists had expected.

Their research concludes that:

• communities specializing in industries facing Chinese competition suffered large employment declines;
• wages fell;
• labor-force participation declined;
• many workers never regained comparable jobs;
• the effects persisted for decades.  

Did exports offset the losses?

Partially.

Economists Robert Feenstra and Akira Sasahara estimated that between 1995 and 2011:

• imports from China reduced demand for approximately 2.0 million U.S. jobs;
• at the same time, U.S. exports supported approximately 6.6 million jobs;
• overall, export growth exceeded the employment losses attributable to imports from China.  

This does not mean workers who lost manufacturing jobs necessarily benefited. Export-related jobs often arose in different industries, different regions, and frequently required different skills.

Automation versus globalization

Another important point is that globalization was not the only cause of manufacturing job losses.

Most economists conclude that:

• automation and productivity improvements eliminated many manufacturing jobs;
• globalization eliminated additional jobs through import competition and offshoring.

The exact contribution of each remains debated, but the Autor-Dorn-Hanson research indicates that Chinese import competition alone explains about one-quarter of the manufacturing employment decline between 2000 and 2007.  

References

Autor, David H., David Dorn, and Gordon H. Hanson. The China Syndrome: Local Labor Market Effects of Import Competition in the United States. National Bureau of Economic Research Working Paper No. 18054, 2012. https://www.nber.org/papers/w18054  

Autor, David, David Dorn, and Gordon H. Hanson. The China Shock: Learning from Labor Market Adjustment to Large Changes in Trade. Annual Review of Economics 8 (2016). https://www.nber.org/papers/w21906  

Autor, David, David Dorn, and Gordon H. Hanson. How the China Trade Shock Impacted U.S. Manufacturing Workers and Labor Markets, and the Consequences for U.S. Politics. Washington Center for Equitable Growth, 2025. https://www.hks.harvard.edu/publications/how-china-trade-shock-impacted-us-manufacturing-workers-and-labor-markets-and  

Autor, David, David Dorn, and Gordon H. Hanson. On the Persistence of the China Shock. National Bureau of Economic Research Working Paper No. 29401, 2021. https://www.nber.org/papers/w29401  

Feenstra, Robert C., and Akira Sasahara. The ‘China Shock’, Exports and U.S. Employment: A Global Input-Output Analysis. National Bureau of Economic Research Working Paper No. 24022, 2017. https://www.nber.org/papers/w24022  

Overall, the strongest evidence suggests that globalization’s “China Shock” displaced roughly 2 million U.S. jobs, primarily in manufacturing, while trade also supported millions of other jobs through exports. The net effect on total employment is therefore more complex than the gross number of jobs lost, but the localized economic and social impacts on affected communities were substantial and long-lasting.

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