A CNN Viewer Has Questions for Mike Rowe

I would love to hear Mike Rowe's reply to this. His answers had plenty of anecdotes, as did this article. My question is, where's the data?

It seems to me that these articles are talking about different sorts of jobs. They are both quoting the same numbers, but choose to use different application for those numbers. I would think there is some truth in both sides. For Rowe's part, he is talking about jobs that can not be outsourced and are not optional to those who need the work finished. Pipe fitting, maintenance through welding, and vague post-Katrina engineering jobs are jobs and skills that have to be done on site, and therefore can not be moved overseas. They also pay well. These are jobs that make up part of that 3.5M jobs number, but I would guess a small portion of it. The NYT article talks about machining and factory work. In this field, work can be done here or abroad, so the cost of workers is a commodity. Unless tax breaks help these factories bring higher wages or the owners are altruistic, in my mind we can count these jobs as already gone. Someone could take that job for a bit, making $10-15 an hour but as soon as the commodity cost of wages exceeds the cost of added transportation abroad or the cost of transportation falls or any number of little pieces that fall into the outsourcing equation change, those jobs are gone just like the rest. The issue with these jobs are that they are still considered skilled when technology is quickly making them unskilled.

Rowe is a bit difficult to figure out. Many of the things he says are are quite sensible, but they seem to be couched in neocon notions of American exceptionalism and blame-the-poor economics.

I don't know much about him except from what I say during his appearance on Real Time With Bill Maher.

I think this is just the general level of discourse provided by the average CNN viewer.