Yay for free trade

I came across this nifty analysis paper today.

"Trading Up: How Expanding Trade Has Delivered Better Jobs and Higher Living Standards for American Workers"
http://freetrade.org/node/782

The author does a nice job of analyzing how middle class income has changed over the last 40 years or so, and what impact trade has had on both employment and wages. It fairly well demolishes the standard protectionist arguments that free trade is hurting our manufacturing sector, taking our jobs, and lowering our wages.

Key points:

• The manufacturing sector is actually doing very well, with record revenue and record profits. It employs fewer people because of efficiency gains through technology.
  
• Trade has had no discernible, negative effect on the number of jobs in the U.S. economy. Our economy today is at full employment, with 16.5 million more people working than a decade ago.
• Trade accounts for only about 3 percent of dislocated workers.Technology and other domestic factors displace far more workers than does trade.
• Average real compensation per hour paid to American workers, which includes benefits as well as wages, has increased by 22 percent in the past decade.
• Median household income in the United States is 6 percent higher in real dollars than it was a decade ago at a comparable point in the previous business cycle. Middle-class households have been moving up the income ladder, not down.
• The net loss of 3.3 million manufacturing jobs in the past decade has been overwhelmed by a net gain of 11.6 million jobs in sectors where the average wage is higher than in manufacturing. Two-thirds of the net new jobs created since 1997 are in sectors where workers earn more than in manufacturing.
• The median net worth of U.S. households jumped by almost one-third between 1995 and 2004, from $70,800 to $93,100.
• The large majority of Americans, including the typical middle-class family, is measurably better off today after a decade of healthy trade expansion.