Open International Markets Bring More Local Jobs: Report

By Ideas Lab Staff September 28, 2012

The OECD’s latest collaboration finds that local job growth and wages occur when borders to trade come down.

In its findings on trade and employment, the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development highlights how different aspects of trade, including global services outsourcing and production offshoring, are critical to boosting growth and creating high paying jobs.

The OECD-led International Collaborative Initiative on Trade and Employment (ICITE) collected its conclusions in the publication Policy Priorities for International Trade and Jobs.

The conclusions are obvious, the organization argues. “Open markets further, protect workers, not jobs, and invest in education and skills training to allow workers to seize newly emerging opportunities,” it states.

Trade-generated growth is more inclusive and more widely shared across society, it argues.

In one chapter, authors Richard Newfarmer and Monika Sztajerowska undertook 14 multi-country studies and concluded that “trade plays an independent and positive role in raising incomes.”