Return One Million Jobs (ROMJ) was created to raise $20 million to bring one-million manufacturing jobs to the United States from offshore. The project will utilize global data analytics to help companies compare the total cost of supplying the US market via manufacturing offshore vs. domestically.

Over the last few decades, as many as four million manufacturing jobs have been lost to foreign nations to reduce costs. In the last few years, costs of production in China and other nations have been increasing, encouraging even many Chinese companies to begin producing in the US. The Reshoring Initiative, an organization working to return manufacturing jobs to the US, estimates that as many as one-million jobs can be returned based on objective cost analysis. This is the goal of ROMJ and the Reshoring Initiative.

Carl Carstensen, who recently retired after 37 years with IBM global consulting services with a focus on the industrial sector, is leading ROMJ. “I’ve seen so much offshoring in my career,” said Carstensen. “Although lower labor rates encouraged tens of thousands of manufacturers to relocate production, total cost comparisons today may encourage as many as 25 percent to return jobs to the US.”

The Return One Million Jobs campaign is organizing a $20 million fund for a major data analytics program to consider all costs of production in the US from all 100,000 companies with offshored production and sourcing. The project will seek to compare the total cost of offshored production with costs in the US for all offshored manufacturing.

“It’s quite possible to find synergy with thousands of companies bringing back jobs to America,” said Carstensen. “Data analytics may find additional cost reductions as well as an increase in return-incentives.”

ROMJ’s first job is to inspire all 100,000 US manufacturers with offshore production to participate in the free data analytics project. “If they use the tools from the Reshoring Initiative and advanced data analytics, if they do the math,” said Carstensen, “many manufacturers should want to return jobs to the US, to increase profits.”