NAFTA at 25 - Jobs lost - Stagnant Wages

NAFTA at 25: 5M American Manufacturing Jobs Lost, Flat U.S. Wages



As the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA) turns 25 this year, American manufacturing jobs and U.S. workers’ wages continue trying to come back after more than a decade of massive layoffs and stagnant pay.

During its enactment, free trade proponents claimed NAFTA would create a million U.S. jobs in its first five years. Not only did these job numbers never come to fruition, but NAFTA has more easily allowed multinational corporations to outsource and offshore American jobs to Canada and Mexico.


“I believe that NAFTA will create 200,000 American jobs in the first two years of its effect … I believe that NAFTA will create a million jobs in the first five years of its impact,” former President Bill Clinton said in 1993.

Instead, nearly a million American jobs have been certified by the federal government as being lost directly due to NAFTA, according to data gathered by Public Citizen. These are only the U.S. jobs that the Trade Adjustment Assistance (TAA) program recognizes as being lost to free trade and does not indicate the actual number of jobs lost.




As trade deficits have soared nearly 600 percent since NAFTA’s enactment, close to five million American manufacturing jobs were eliminated from the U.S. economy, encompassing the net shuttering of nearly 50,000 U.S. manufacturing facilities.