UC Davis

We study the employment responses to the expansion of US exports and to the import competition, especially from China. We find that although import competition reduces jobs, export expansion also creates a substantial number of jobs. At the industry level, job gains due to US export expansion largely offset job losses due to Chinese import competition, resulting in a net gain of 379 thousand jobs over 1991–2011 in our preferred estimate. At the commuting zone level, job gains and losses are roughly balanced, with a slight net loss of 68 thousand jobs and a substantial range around this preferred estimate depending on the specification.