The Unemployment Spike

We learned that last month's unemployment rate in the US spiked to over 6%. While this is not good we should be happy about this number because while it represents the overall unemployment rate in the US (made up mostly of the manufacturing and construction industry) it does not represent the whole picture. If this was 25 years ago, pre-outsourcing and offshoring, the unemployment number might be 9 or 10%. You see, when Mattel, or Revlon, or Nike has to cut back on production, they don't walk out in their backyard and layoff their workers, they send emails and long distance phone calls to China, India, southeast Asia and plants cut back on their schedule or shut down. Who loses their jobs are the workers in these countries. While not good for those workers, it masks what is really happening and the impact here is not as bad. So, there is a silver-lining in offshoring? Maybe. Although when it comes time to create jobs, productivity, efficiency, etc. what will we do? We can't produce any longer. The phones and emails will go off around the globe and workers will be put on the payroll in the far flung parts of the world. Potentially this global labor arbitrage creates a better leverage with these countries that depend on us to buy our debt and to import to us. That could be, but I can't figure those numbers out. What I do know is that things might be worse than they look and no one seems to be reporting or writing about how bad things might be right now. If I can see a rock that is uncovered then I suspect there are many more that I certainly can't see.