Blinder on Off-shorable Jobs

Princeton University professor and former Fed Vice-chairman Alan Blinder has an attention-grabbing piece on the Voxeu site. The article summarizes some research he's been doing on off-shoring of U.S. jobs. He sees a problem in previous research because the results have been disparate. These are explainable, he says, given the research methods used.

Blinder's research indicates that up to 25% of U.S. jobs are off-shorable. And while that may be startling, the conclusions are not. The article is worth your time, particularly as the topic has a way of working its way into discussions about trade and policy, both of which come up in the traditional economics course in the later part of the semester. And for the AP and IP economics courses, I would think Blinder's piece offers some good points for free-response questions.

I look forward to your comments.