Give them an 'F' in retaining U.S. jobs; state and Federal economic policies push jobs offshore.(headlines)

Most U.S. state governments are losing ground to global competition due to their poor efforts at keeping jobs and attracting businesses, a new study reports.

"While many of the overseas job losses are inevitable, a surprising number of jobs can be kept in the U.S. if we make the right efforts to work with businesses," says Dr. Ronald R. Pollina, author of the Top Ten Pro-Business States 2005: Keeping Jobs in America, an annual study of state and Federal economic development policies.

"Each job loss has a reverse multiplier effect on the local economy of between 1.5 and 1.7 jobs. This means that the impact of losing the 3 million U.S. manufacturing jobs that vanished between July 2000 and January 2004 could reach 5.1 million in total lost jobs," says Dr. Pollina, who gives states ranking in the bottom of the survey an "F" grade for costing their constituents jobs. "U.S. job retention efforts are a bipartisan disaster. As more manufacturing and service sector jobs go offshore, most states urgently need to reevaluate their economic development efforts."

"Many large states such as California, New York, Illinois ...