'Reshoring' of Jobs Looks Meager

This spring, President Obama said he had “good news” to report: Lost American jobs are returning to the U.S. “For a lot of businesses,” the president told a crowd in Albany, N.Y., on May 8, “it’s now starting to make sense to bring jobs back home.” In trumpeting this “reshoring” of jobs from abroad, the administration points to employers, including General Electric and Caterpillar, that have shifted some manufacturing to the U.S. The president also cited an April online survey by Boston Consulting Group showing that 37 percent of manufacturers with sales of more than $1 billion and almost half of those with more than $10 billion “plan to or are actively considering bringing back production from China to the U.S.”

Yet there’s little data to back up claims of a reshoring rush. For every company Obama praises for coming back home, there are others still shipping jobs out of the country. Honeywell International in Acton, Mass., plans to eliminate 23 positions by yearend when manufacturing of the company’s stainless steel products moves to Nanjing, China. Boston Scientific let go about 1,100 workers when the company moved production of its medical stents from Miami to Costa Rica.