Tradeology, the ITA Blog

Carrie Bevis is an intern at the International Trade Administration’s Office of Public Affairs.

Yesterday afternoon, I had the pleasure of sitting through my very first trade statistics briefing after U.S. Commerce Secretary Gary Locke released the US International Trade in Goods and Services report compiled by the Commerce Department’s U.S. Census Bureau and the U.S. Bureau of Economic Analysis. It was announced that though exports decreased by 0.5 percent in May, total exports are still up 16.4 percent compared to the same period last year.

Exports supported 2.4 million jobs in 2009, 21.9% of all manufacturing jobs in the U.S.

To my delight, all of the trade stats were illustrated in a medley of attractive and understandable graphs and tables. In 2009, that one out of every 21 private sector jobs was supported by U.S. manufactured exports was displayed in a pleasing pie chart while the fact that the value of exports to support one job rose to $181,000 was brandished in a bar graph.

All numbers aside, the key message is that the U.S. Department of Commerce is still as committed as ever to accelerating job growth and providing businesses with the tools they need to be globally competitive. “As we move closer to reaching the president’s goal of doubling exports by 2015, the Obama administration will continue to help businesses reach the 95 percent of consumers who live outside our borders,” Locke said.

Despite an increase in the trade deficit of 15.1 percent due to a 2.6 percent increase in imports of goods and services, the department is happy to report that U.S. exports support an estimated 9.2 million jobs in 2010 which is up from 8.7 million in 2009. This nugget of knowledge was announced in July’s blog post Exports Support U.S. Jobs  which highlighted the brief on Projected Jobs Supported by Exports for 2009 and 2010. More spotlight stories highlighting export-related jobs can be found at the online Office of Competition and Economic Analysis.

For more fresh facts from the export statistics released yesterday, check out the handy-dandy Fact Sheet. If you want a deeper break down of the information, ITA has published several other reports that can be found under Industry Analysis from the trade.gov homepage. For example, State Reports provides a detailed analysis of the effects of international trade on all 50 states, from the how foreign investment is creating jobs in Alabama to Wyoming’s dependence on world markets.

Stay tuned for more tasty tidbits of trade facts!