You won’t find Procter & Gamble’s U.S. head count in its filings, either. When initially asked for the number, company spokesman Paul Fox wrote in an e-mail: “We do not track nor report U.S.-specific jobs numbers vs. jobs overseas.” After it was pointed out that P&G’s chief executive, Bob McDonald, had cited such figures in a Cincinnati Enquirer op-ed piece, Fox acknowledged the company did track that data. The number of U.S. employees is 35,000 out of 127,000 total, or 28 percent.
Other companies that do not reveal their job breakdowns include Hewlett-Packard, AT&T, Apple and Pfizer, which stopped reporting the number in its SEC filings in 2000.
The latter two are part of a coalition of companies pushing for Congress to give them a tax break on money they have parked overseas, saying that any money brought back to this country would spur hiring.
There is no law requiring companies to reveal publicly where their employees are based. Companies can choose to include the breakdown of jobs here and abroad in their SEC filings for the benefit of shareholders. But they are required by law to report the numbers to the Commerce Department, which compiles a yearly report on total employment by U.S. multinationals.
Ray Mataloni, a staff researcher at the U.S. Bureau of Economic Analysis, said the government gets the numbers only with the agreement that it will not disclose firm-level data. “I don’t think it’s a question of companies feeling like they’re hiding dirty laundry by not giving this information out,” Mataloni said. “I don’t think they really have anything to hide, but I don’t really know the logic of why that’s something they don’t just put in their annual report.”
A few companies expressed worry about their competitors knowing too much about their operations.
Scott N. Paul, executive director of the Alliance for American Manufacturing, said it’s because of the politics. “Outsourcing has become a lightning rod, and the media coverage they’re likely to get is unfavorable,” Paul said.
For chief executives of multinational companies who are used to answering only to their shareholders, the country’s jobs crisis has uncomfortably switched the political spotlight onto their decisions about who they employ and where. It has also thrown into relief the fact that when U.S. multinationals chase profits and hire workers anywhere in the world, they become less tied to any one country, including this one.
Immelt acknowledged last month that the health of a company such as GE is now less connected to the U.S. economy, but he added that companies including GE “got carried away” with outsourcing. “I’m a GE leader first and foremost,” he said. “At the same time . . . I work for an American company.”
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