California’s Trade-Related Job Losses on the Rise in Recent Years

Sacramento, Calif. — California’s trade-related job loss has increased over the last three years, according to a new analysis of U.S. Labor Department data conducted by the California Trade Justice Coalition (CTJC). The state also has the highest trade-related job loss numbers in the country.

“The numbers don’t lie. Things aren’t getting better,” said Steve Smith of the California Labor Federation.  “California is hemorrhaging more and more jobs to offshoring week after week, with devastating effects on the state’s working families, our communities and our economy.”

Trade policy experts from CTJC compiled and reviewed data from the federal government’s Trade Adjustment Assistance (TAA) program, which provides extended unemployment benefits to a subset of workers that the Department of Labor certifies as having lost their jobs either due to direct offshoring or displacement by imports.  The government data reveal:

• Trade-Related Job Loss Is on The Rise in California: California experienced a 123% increase in trade-related job losses over the last three years in comparison to the three years before that, with 26,375 job losses certified for TAA under petitions filed between 2017 and 2019 compared to 21,507 between 2014 and 2016. The state likewise suffered a 158% increase in trade-related job losses in 2019 over 2018.
  
• California Is the Hardest Hit State in the Country: California suffered the highest trade-related job loss numbers in the country from 2017–2019. These rankings are worse than Washington’s historical position as the state with the second most TAA certifications in the country from 1994–2019 with 213,852 certified job losses over that period.
  
• All Corners of the State Have Been Affected: Cities and towns with more than 100 TAA certifications over the last three years include: Anaheim (100 certified job losses); Burbank (402 certified job losses); Camarillo (405 certified job losses); Carlsbad (245 certified job losses); Carson (509 certified job losses); Chula Vista (270 certified job losses); City of Industry (460 certified job losses); Commerce (359 certified job losses); Compton (123 certified job losses); Concord (256 certified job losses); Corona (123 certified job losses); Culver City (392 certified job losses); Cypress (189 certified job losses); El Segundo (641 certified job losses); Fontana (109 certified job losses); Fremont (421 certified job losses); Fullerton (340 certified job losses); Garden Grove (166 certified job losses); Goleta (296 certified job losses); Hemet (325 certified job losses); Hollister (165 certified job losses); Huntington Beach (644 certified job losses); Irvine (793 certified job losses); La Palma (280 certified job losses); Lakeport (169 certified job losses); Long Beach (521 certified job losses); Los Angeles (607 certified job losses); Menlo Park (134 certified job losses); Milpitas (100 certified job losses); Mountain View (2,737 certified job losses); Oceanside (436 certified job losses); Ontario (603 certified job losses); Perris (141 certified job losses); Porterville (150 certified job losses); Rancho Cucamonga (445 certified job losses); Riverside (310 certified job losses); San Diego (796 certified job losses); San Francisco (546 certified job losses); San Jose (496 certified job losses); San Ramon (135 certified job losses); Santa Clara (1,029 certified job losses); Simi Valley (407 certified job losses); South Gate (232 certified job losses); Stockton (167 certified job losses); Sun Valley (116 certified job losses); Sylmar (233 certified job losses); Thousand Oaks (126 certified job losses); Tracy (171 certified job losses); Tustin (493 certified job losses); Valencia (393 certified job losses); Vernon (301 certified job losses); Vista (321 certified job losses); Watsonville (147 certified job losses); West Sacramento (449 certified job losses); and Westlake Village (117 certified job losses).

Additional data from the U.S. Census Bureau also shows that the U.S. trade deficit in goods has been on the rise over the last three years, reaching over $852 billion in 2019. California’s own trade deficit in goods was almost $235 billion in 2019.

“Offshored jobs mean less income, cut-off benefits and increased stress for the families directly affected, but the wider community is also often hurt,” said Robert Longer of the Communications Workers of America. “When thousands of California’s jobs are shipped overseas there’s less money for people to spend at local businesses, less tax revenue for our schools and other public services, and there’s also a very real downward pressure on the wages and benefits of the jobs that are left.”

“We also need to get serious about trade deals that actually enforce labor rights, require wage improvements and include strong environmental standards so that corporations are no longer able to ship jobs around the globe to wherever workers are the most exploited and regulations are the weakest,” said Will Wiltschko of the California Trade Justice Coalition.

The TAA data used for this analysis is particularly reliable as it provides a hard count of actual jobs lost at actual worksites, rather than relying on the economic modeling found in most government, academic and industry group reports about job effects of U.S. trade policy. That said, the TAA certification numbers included here fall far short of the true number of jobs in California lost due to trade — both because the TAA program has never covered all categories of work adversely affected by trade and because worksites where no one actively applies for TAA are not captured in the dataset.

A full copy of the CTJC analysis is online here.

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Recent TAA Certifications in California

Company Name	City	Petition Date	Job Losses
Nuance Communications, Inc.	Agoura Hills	13-Jun-19	17
B/E Aerospace, Inc.	Anaheim	24-Feb-17	100
Siskiyou Forest Products	Anderson	20-Sep-18	44
East Bay Times	Antioch	18-Apr-18	10
St. Mary Medical Center	Apple Valley	12-Jul-19	3
TIDI Products, LLC	Arcadia	14-Nov-18	78
Sierra Pacific Industries	Arcata	20-Sep-18	90
Crimson Renewable Energy, L.P.	Bakersfield	21-May-18	7
Biosense Webster Inc.	Baldwin Park	30-Jul-18	4
Continental Casualty Company	Brea	7-Mar-17	5
Power Probe Inc.	Brea	10-Apr-17	11
Beckman Coulter, Inc.	Brea	1-Mar-19	50
Deluxe 3D LLC	Burbank	1-Jun-18	15
Deluxe Media Inc.	Burbank	9-Jul-18	67
Deluxe Media Inc.	Burbank	21-Dec-18	20
Deluxe Media Inc.	Burbank	15-Mar-19	153
Deluxe Media Inc.	Burbank	24-Apr-19	122
Allianz Global Risks US Insurance Company, N.A.	Burbank	10-May-19	11
Providence Health & Services-Washington	Burbank	12-Jul-19	14
Prolifics, Inc.	Calabasas	26-Jan-18	68
Technicolor	Camarillo	17-Feb-17	50
Stragtegic Products and Services, LLC	Camarillo	14-Mar-17	83
ODU-USA, Inc.	Camarillo	19-Jul-17	23
Johanson Technology Inc.	Camarillo	29-Mar-18	25
Ossur North America	Camarillo	22-Oct-18	24
ZPower LLC	Camarillo	24-May-19	200
Boston Scientific Corporation	Campbell	7-Feb-19	26
Confluent Medical Technologies	Campbell	20-Feb-20	67
Mo Bio Laboratories, Inc.	Carlsbad	28-Feb-17	68
Breg, Inc.	Carlsbad	1-Dec-17	94
Zimmer Dental, Inc.	Carlsbad	19-Jan-18	83
CWD LLC	Carson	17-Oct-18	509
Toppan Merrill LLC	Century City	12-Mar-19	32
Hewlett Packard Enterprise	Cerritos	2-Feb-17	42
AT&T Services, Inc.	Cerritos	4-Apr-19	1
TE Connectivity/Measurement Specialties	Chatsworth	1-May-17	46
Custom Control Sensors, LLC	Chatsworth	27-Jul-17	34
United Technologies Aerospace Systems	Chula Vista	22-Mar-17	3
Integrated Energy Technologies Inc.	Chula Vista	28-Jun-17	26
Toyo Tire Mexico LLC	Chula Vista	10-Apr-18	4
Rohr, Inc.	Chula Vista	3-Oct-19	237
Sweda Company LLC	City of Industry	10-Mar-17	37
Smurfit Kappa North America, LLC	City of Industry	20-Feb-18	256
Frank and Adam Apparel LLC	City of Industry	7-Jun-18	90
Bank of the West	City of Industry	28-Feb-19	19
Bank of the West	City of Industry	12-Nov-19	58
Imperial Western Products, Inc.	Coachella	21-May-18	35
Smart & Final Stores LLC	Commerce	13-Nov-17	65
Unified Grocers, Inc.	Commerce	20-Nov-17	108
Murray’s Iron Works, Inc.	Commerce	28-Nov-17	61
Deco Lighting	Commerce	11-Apr-18	24
99 Cents Only Store	Commerce	6-Nov-19	101
Transamerican Auto Parts	Compton	20-Mar-18	30
Kraco Enterprises LLC	Compton	17-Jul-18	83
MOL (America) Inc.	Concord	6-Apr-18	4
Ricoh USA, Inc.	Concord	21-Aug-19	2
Wells Fargo Bank N.A.	Concord	1-Jan-20	250
Bell-Carter Foods LLC	Corning	19-Oct-18	46
Meggitt Control Systems	Corona	27-Jun-17	53
Tridien Medical	Corona	31-Jan-18	70
Smiths Interconnect Americas, Inc.	Costa Mesa	30-Jan-20	11
International Business Machines (IBM)	Costa Mesa	16-Mar-17	7
Experian Services Corp.	Costa Mesa	12-Aug-19	68
Schneider Electric IT USA, Inc.	Costa Mesa	16-Aug-19	10
Medtronic	Culver City	23-Oct-18	80

Source: “Petitions and Determination Data,” U.S. Department of Labor, Employment and Training Administration, Office of Trade Adjustment Assistance (OTAA). https://www.dol.gov/agencies/eta/tradeact/data/petitions-determinations