Via "Obama Solution to Stop Outsourcing: Stop Counting Jobs Outsourced (No, Seriously!)" (link) comes this:

Like a scorekeeper for the world, a tiny unit within the Bureau of Labor Statistics tracks globalization's winners and losers, and the results are not always pretty for the United States. Manufacturing jobs here, for example, have fallen faster since 1979 than in Canada, Germany or Japan. Compensation for those jobs dropped here in 2008 but jumped in South Korea and Australia.

Soon, however, Americans may be spared the demoralization in these numbers: The White House wants to shutter the unit that produces them.

President Obama's budget would eliminate the International Labor Comparisons office and transfer its 16 economists to expand the bureau's work tracking inflation and occupational trends. The White House says the cut, estimated to save $2 million, is one of many difficult decisions the president was forced to make to control spending.

Somehow their explanation doesn't wash, especially since at least their economists are just being transferred instead of their jobs being eliminated completely. The first-linked article's take is probably correct: this is designed to hide just how dramatically our manufacturing base has been devastated by globalism.