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Everyone knows that the US is not the job powerhouse that it used to be. Oh there may be more jobs, but they are not the bread and butter jobs of old, where a man would support his family by the sweat of his brow. Many of the jobs pay only minimum wage and were never designed for supporting a family, they were more like jobs that your kid would get for the summer or after school, to earn extra money for dates and such. But along with this trend of lower paid jobs has come the exporting of jobs. Jobs that used to be available to Americans have been taken from this country and sent over seas, lots of jobs. But we all know about this already, but have you ever thought about how many jobs in this country are given to us by the corporations of foreign countries? I began to wonder about this, because I was never comfortable with this idea. These figures come from the U.S. government and are for 2002, the latest year available. Here is what I found:

New York State - The reason I started with New York State was the fact that it had the highest amount of exports of any state. 30,420 companies exported goods from here. In later years California and Texas passed New York's exports. Exports account for a huge part of the business of this state and yet 92% of all exporting companies had 500 or less employees. Almost 400,000 workers in 2002 worked for foreign companies in New York. About 1/5 of these jobs entail manufacturing, a sector that is shrinking for American companies. In 2002 the foreign manufacturing companies accounted for over 11 percent of the manufacturing jobs in the state. Foreign companies employ over 5.5 percent of all private workers. The major foreign employers were the United Kingdom, the Netherlands, Germany, France and Switzerland.

One has to wonder how foreign companies can take the same workers that have been laid off from U.S. manufacturing companies who couldn't make it and make a profit? Is there something wrong with our system?

California - This is a huge state that could be a country. It has the population and resources. 55,421 companies exported goods and again these were mostly small and medium sized companies. There were over 616,000 people working for foreign companies in that state in 2002. In 2002 more foreign companies had workers in this state than in any other. So who were these countries that employed so many of our workers? They were the United Kingdom, Japan, Switzerland, Germany and France. Kind of surprising isn't it? I think Switzerland and France are the biggest surprises. In California, over 9 percent of the manufacturing jobs are with foreign companies.

It is hard to believe but in 2002 just between California and New York we had over 1,000,000 people working for foreign companies. I wonder what would happen if all of a sudden these companies decided to close their doors and move to China? I guess that is not likely but it was just a thought.

Texas - Texas is a growth state. 27,372 companies exported goods in 2002. Again it was small and medium sized companies that accounted for most of the companies exporting. I can't help but think back to the times when America was big in exporting things like steel. Those days are gone forever. There were over 350,000 people working for foreign companies in Texas in 2002. Interesting enough the five biggest foreign employers in Texas were the United Kingdom, the Netherlands, France, Canada and Germany. In Texas, foreign employment amounts to 4.4 percent of the total work force.

There are states where foreign controlled companies account for about 5 percent of all private employment. It might even be higher now but in 2002 here was an example of a few:

New York - Listed above.

Alaska - Over 5.1 percent of all workers in the private sector in Alaska work for foreign companies. That was 11,200 in 2002.. The major foreign employers were, The United Kingdom, Canada and Japan.

Connecticut - This state had a whopping 7.7 percent of all private employees working for foreign companies. This amounted to 113,000 people in 2002. The major foreign employers were the Netherlands, United Kingdom, Germany and Canada.

Delaware - 6.4 percent of all employees worked for foreign companies. This was 23,300 people in 2002. The major foreign countries employing them were the United Kingdom, Germany, the Netherlands and Switzerland.

I could go on but what is the point? I just wanted to show that there is a trend in this country and that is the trend of foreign companies coming here and employing our citizens. Hey the work is good and I am not complaining about that. It is just a curious situation and does make one wonder why American companies didn't fill this void? When you look at the states you begin to see that the major employment is being carried out by only a few countries and they are Great Britain, the Netherlands, Japan, Switzerland, Germany, Canada and France. Will this change in the future, will a country like China be the dominant force in foreign employment in this country? It could happen as the Chinese economy gets stronger and stronger. Maybe China will decide its cheaper to build cars here than to import them and maybe they will set up big financial institutions to handle their new found wealth. In any event it looks like we will have to think globally. After all, we had companies overseas for years and now the pendulum is swinging the other way.

It is beginning to look more and more that we are going to have a new global economy where every country has major corporations from other countries operating within their borders. Maybe this is what the world needs, after all, an introduction to other cultures wouldn't hurt the third world at all.