This month, brace yourself to hear plenty of rhetoric coming out of Washington about “exports” and “jobs”. As a new Republican-dominated Congress starts work, energy companies are lobbying to drop a decades-old ban on exports of crude oil, arguing that such sales will create thousands of American jobs.
这个月，华盛顿会传出大量有关“出口”和“就业”的言论。随着共和党主导的新国会开始工作，能源企业正在游说，以求撤销已实行数十年的原油出口禁令，辩称此举将为美国创造数千个就业岗位。
As pitches go, it is a powerful one. But there is another question about exports and jobs that Congress should be debating more urgently: the fact that US businesses are becoming so efficient that they require fewer workers than ever before to deliver growth, even — or especially — for exports.
就推销角度而言，这是一个强有力的理由。但在出口和就业方面，还有一个问题更迫切地需要国会展开辩论：美国企业的效率已变得如此之高，以致它们实现增长所需的工人数量比以往任何时候都要少，甚至——或者说尤其是——出口增长也是如此。

Take a look at some fascinating data compiled by the Commerce Department, and quietly released last year. This shows that in the past few years, the number of American jobs supported by exports has risen as overseas sales have grown. In 2009, exports created 9.7m jobs; by 2013 the tally was 11.3m.
看一看商务部(Commerce Department)去年编制并悄悄发布的一些有意思的数据。数据显示，过去几年里，随着海外销售的增长，出口带动的美国就业人数也在升高。2009年，出口创造的就业岗位达到970万个；到2013年，这一数字变为1130万个。
This is cheering. And since overseas sales rose further in 2014, amid a wider economic recovery, there is every reason to think that when the commerce department publishes the 2014 tally the number of export-linked jobs will have grown again.
这很令人欣喜。随着2014年海外销售在宏观经济复苏的背景下进一步增长，我们有充足理由认为，当商务部发布2014年数据时，出口相关就业岗位将再次增多。
But there is a billion dollar catch. Look at how many jobs are being generated per dollar of sales and the graph steadily slopes down. Back in 2009, each billion dollar’s worth of exports was creating 6,763 jobs. In 2013, it was 5,590 jobs. That is a fall of 17 per cent — in just four years.
但这里存在一个10亿美元“陷阱”。看看每1美元海外销售创造的工作岗位数量，就会发现曲线持续下行。2009年，每出口10亿美元创造的岗位达6763个。2013年，这个数字变为5590个。也就是说，4年期间下降了17%。
There are two ways to interpret this trend. If members of Congress want to feel cheery at the start of a new year, they could celebrate the fact that American companies are becoming more innovative and competitive on the world stage. This partly reflects lower energy costs. But another factor is that as recovery has taken hold in the US, levels of automation and digitisation are rising sharply too.
对这一趋势有两种解读方式。如果国会议员希望在新年之初感到振奋，他们可以欢庆如下事实：美国企业在世界舞台上正变得越来越创新，越来越有竞争力。这部分反映了能源成本降低。但另一个因素在于，随着美国的经济复苏站稳脚跟，自动化和数字化水平也在显著上升。
That is prompting more US companies to develop production inside America, since it holds down labour costs. While Chinese workers might be cheaper than their American counterparts, robots are more cost effective than both — and often more competent.
由于这一趋势压低劳动力成本，它正在促使更多美国企业在国内生产。尽管中国工人可能比美国工人更便宜，但机器人的成本效益比中美两国的工人都更好——而且往往更加称职。
Take Alcoa, the world’s third-largest aluminium company. Having previously expanded production in places such as Mexico and Asia, it is now focusing heavily on the US. This winter, for example, it is remodelling a plant in Savannah, Georgia, that uses pioneering processes to forge metal to withstand ultra-high temperatures.
以世界第三大铝业公司美国铝业(Alcoa)为例。该公司曾把生产业务拓展到墨西哥和亚洲等地，但如今正把目光投向美国本土。例如，这个冬季，该公司正在改造乔治亚州萨凡纳市的一家工厂，该厂利用开创性的工艺锻造能够耐受超高温的金属。
A decade ago, such work might have been placed outside America. But Klaus Kleinfeld, Alcoa chief executive, says that it now makes sense to keep it in Savannah, to be closer to customers and research units. “The pressure to automate is huge,” he says. “We are not doing it for cost, but for innovation reasons . . . a precision is required that no human hand or eye can deliver.”
10年前，这项工作可能会被安排在美国以外进行。但美国铝业首席执行官柯菲德(Klaus Kleinfeld)表示，如今把这一业务留在萨凡纳市是合理的，因为这样可以更接近客户和研发部门。“提高自动化程度的压力十分巨大，”他说，“我们这么做未必是出于成本考虑，而是出于创新的原因……我们需要达到人手或人眼难以企及的精度。”
Companies such as Whirlpool, General Electric and Ford are taking similar steps. Even clothing companies are doing the same. Levi Strauss, for example, still makes its jeans outside America. But it recently brought its innovation centre — and those jobs — from Turkey to San Francisco. Boston Consulting Group reckons that over half of all large US manufacturing companies are either actively re-shoring activity, or considering this, as America becomes a more competitive destination.
惠而浦(Whirlpool)、通用电气(General Electric)和福特(Ford)等公司正在采取类似步骤。就连制衣公司也在这么做。例如，李维斯(Levi Strauss)仍在美国以外生产牛仔裤。但该公司最近将其创新中心——连同相关岗位——从土耳其迁回旧金山。波士顿咨询公司(BCG)认为，随着美国变成一个更具竞争力的生产基地，美国逾半大型制造企业正在积极实施或者考虑回流(re-shoring)。
There is a more pessimistic twist to all this: what will the surplus workers do? An optimistic answer is that the economy will eventually adapt to generate new jobs, as it did 150 years ago when farm workers were forced off the land. A downbeat scenario is that this trend will exacerbate the bifurcation that has developed in the jobs market in the past decade, as mid-tier manufacturing jobs have disappeared. In a world of hyper-efficient companies there is swelling demand for a highly trained elite; indeed, Thursday’s jobless claims data suggest that companies are actually finding it hard to hire enough skilled workers. Alcoa needs plenty of computer programmers. But what it does not need (as much) are traditional metal-bashers. Exports can boom — but with fewer blue-collar workers.
这一切难免存在比较令人悲观的另一面，那就是：多余的工人怎么办？一个乐观回答是，美国经济最终将适应新形势，创造出新的工作岗位，就像150年前农场工人被迫离开土地之后的情形一样。另一个令人沮丧的可能前景是，随着中层制造业岗位的消失，这一趋势将加剧过去10年里发生在就业市场的两级分化。在一个企业效率极高的世界，市场对训练有素的精英人才的需求在膨胀；的确上，上周四发布的申领失业救济人数数据似乎表明，企业其实难以招聘到足够多的熟练工人。但企业不需要的是传统的金属锻工。出口可能蓬勃发展，但企业需要的蓝领工人减少了。
Mr Kleinfeld has recently started working with community colleges on retraining programmes, in a bid to help workers to adapt. Other companies are doing the same. But what is lamentably missing is any coherent policy from Washington to support such endeavour. Indeed, Congress seems to be paying woefully little attention to the issue, compared with the focus it is devoting to other topics, such as those energy exports. That needs to change — well before the current recovery loses steam.
不久前，美国铝业的柯菲德开始跟社区学院合办再培训课程，试图帮助工人们适应新环境。其它公司也在这么做。但可惜的是，华盛顿方面对于此类努力没有出台协调的政策。实际上，相比国会对能源出口等其他议题投入的注意力，议员们似乎极少关注这一问题。这种局面需要改变——赶在当前复苏尚未失去势头之前。