The Democratic National Committee released an ad Aug. 6 saying 2.7 million manufacturing jobs had been lost under President Bush. That’s true, but ignores the fact that manufacturing jobs started their decline three years before Bush took office.

The ad also says “Bush protects tax breaks favoring corporations that move their headquarters overseas” and that Kerry would “end job-killing tax loopholes.” But as we’ve said before, “offshoring” accounts for just a small fraction of jobs that are lost, and even Democratic economists say changing the tax code won’t end the overseas job drain anyway.

The Democratic National Committee ad uses the time-honored tactic of putting the opponent’s worst foot forward. It’s a one-sided presentation that doesn’t give the full picture.

Job loss figures

As the announcer says, “millions of good jobs lost to plant closures and outsourcing,” the video shows the words “2.7 million manufacturing jobs lost.”

That’s true as far as it goes. The Bureau of Labor Statistics indeed reports that payroll jobs in the manufacturing sector went from nearly 17.1 million at the time Bush took office to just over 14.4 million in June, a decline of very nearly 2.7 million.

But U.S. manufacturing employment was in decline for nearly three years before Bush became president. It actually declined by 544,000 between the peak reached in March 1998 and when Clinton left office, even as the economy added nearly 7.8 million jobs in all categories during the climax of a roaring economic boom that ended a few weeks after Bush was sworn in. In fact, 238,000 of those manufacturing jobs were lost in Clinton’s last six month alone, showing that the decline was well-established even before Bush had spent a day in office.

By choosing to highlight only manufacturing jobs, furthermore, the DNC ad ignores offsetting gains in other sectors that have been growing. A look at the bigger picture – total payroll jobs – shows a much less severe decline of just over 1.1 million jobs since Bush took office. The decline in manufacturing payrolls has been offset to a great degree by gains in such industries as health care, construction and government (teachers and firemen, for example.)

At this point, it seems unlikely that even total employment will return to the level of January 2001 by the time Bush’s full four-year term has ended. As Democrats like to note, that would indeed make him the first president since Herbert Hoover to experience a net job loss over a full term.

It is also true that as of June the economy had regained nearly 1.5 million jobs since the worst point in the job slump in August 2003. Even manufacturing jobs are growing: 91,000 have been added since January.

Would tax changes help?

The DNC ad says Bush “protects tax breaks favoring corporations that move their headquarters overseas.” It’s true that the administration’s tax-policy experts have testified against a Democratic proposal aimed at stopping U.S. companies from moving their headquarters overseas. But that proposal actually was aimed at stopping corporate tax avoidance, not job loss.

The administration favored a different approach, arguing that the Democratic approach would be “unlikely to work and likely to have harmful effects the U.S. economy,” according to House testimony in June 2002 by Pamela Olson, who was then the Treasury Department’s acting chief of tax policy. She argued that the Democratic approach would discourage businesses already headquartered overseas from doing business in the U.S., hurting rather then helping U.S. employment. We won’t go into the arcane details of the dueling tax proposals here, except to note that both sides professed to be for more U.S. jobs and against offshore tax-shelter schemes.

The ad also says Kerry’s tax plan would “end job-killing tax loopholes,” a reference to the way U.S. tax laws give U.S.-based corporations a financial incentive to invest in other countries rather than bring their overseas profits home to be taxed. We’ve explained before that “offshoring” accounts for only a small fraction of lost jobs, that tax incentives are not the major reason that U.S. companies locate plants overseas, and that even Democratic economists predict that Kerry’s tax proposal wouldn’t halt the practice.

Analysis provided by FactCheck.org, a service of the Annenberg Public Policy Center of the University of Pennsylvania.