The frenetic pace of the competition that has characterized markets’ extended global reach has engendered major churnings in labor and product markets. The sensitivity of the U.S. economy and many of our trading partners to foreign competition appears to have intensified recently as technological obsolescence has continued to foreshorten the expected profitable life of each nation’s capital stock.
The more rapid turnover of our equipment and plant, as one might expect, is mirrored in an increased turnover of jobs. A million American workers, for example, currently leave their jobs every week, two-fifths involuntarily, often in association with facilities that have been displaced or abandoned.