In the past several months, outsourcing--the movement of jobs formerly performed in the US to locations elsewhere in the world--has gotten a lot of attention. Less frequently discussed are the jobs created in the US by foreign businesses. The numbers involved are formidable--more than 6 million people work for foreign owned firms, nearly a third of them (almost 2 million) in manufacturing enterprises--according to data complied by the Bureau of Economic Analysis. BEA tracks the US employment in foreign-owned firms, and has done so for two decades, as part of a program that monitors foreign direct investment in the United States. The BEA data series "employment at US affiliates of foreign-owned firms" is a good indicator of the relative importance of foreign investment to national and state economies. State by state data is summarized in Tables 6 and 7 of an article available in a portable document format (.pdf) file at the above URL.
A group representing a 115 foreign investors and the local affiliates of international firms trumpets the BEA data and other information in their website. The Organization For International Investment (OFII) promotes the value of what they call "insourcing"-- US employment at foreign-owned firms -- as a boon to the US economy. They highlight BEA's state by state data, and also provide a listing of recent US investments by international firms. This has been added to Outsourcing/Offshoring Information and Resources Subject Tracer™ Information Blog. [EconData.Net: What's New, June 2004]
