Comparing the 310,000 or so gross job losses per year that Kletzer (2001) attributes to increased imports to the 15 million total job losses, we find that only slightly more than 2 percent of gross job losses are the result of import competition.
In other words, for the typical job loser during the past ten years, the chances are 98 percent that some factor other than competition from imports was the principal reason for displacement. 4  Data are for the period 1992:Q3 to 2003:Q2 and are drawn from the BLS’s Business Establishment Dynamics survey.