But companies are undermining that construct by shifting even the most skilled jobs and technologies to low-wage countries. At first that meant moving appliance factories to low-wage countries such as Mexico, where GE now employs 30,000. We just can't compete globally with a primarily domestic cost base,'' says AE commercial engines General Manager Chuck Chadwell in a recent AE internal newsletter. Mass. But the unit has been shedding planners, who design and help build tools used to make engines, leaving 140 in Lynn, down from 350 a decade ago and 200 in 1999. Our jobs are going to places like Mexico and Poland, where labor is cheaper,'' says Mary, who has a BA in business administration.
Globalization also helps push down U.S. wages.
Trade accounts for roughly one-quarter of the rise in U.S. income inequality since the 1970s, studies show. Imports shift demand from low-skilled workers to educated ones. Yet economists have never found a way to measure direct wage pressures from globalization. Mike Spaulding knows about that pressure. Trico began shifting 2,200 jobs to Mexico in the mid-1980s.