The United States' increasing trade deficit with China resulted in a loss of 2.3 million American jobs between 2001 and 2007, including 366,000 last year, according to a study released yesterday by the Economic Policy Institute.

Those displaced workers, which have been distributed among all 50 states nationwide lost an average $8,146 last year, a total of $19.4 billion, as they ended up in lower-paying jobs, the institute said in yesterday's report, The China Trade Toll.

Workers producing exports are not doing as well as those in industries affected by imports, the EPI study said. U.S. exports to China are heavily concentrated in commodities, including scrap products and agricultural goods, while 98 percent of Chinese imports were manufactured products. Average wages earned producing U.S. exports to China paid 4.4 percent less than jobs lost to imports from China.

"Contrary to the stereotype and to some economic theories which hold that jobs lost are predominantly in low-skill, low-pay industries, the trade deficit with China has in fact forced workers from better-paying jobs to lower-paying sectors," the EPI revealed in a statement. "More than half (55.6 percent) of the displaced jobs were in the top half of American wage earners. Nearly a third (31 percent) of the jobs lost were among workers with a college degree."

More than two-thirds of the jobs displaced by China trade deficits were in manufacturing. Between 2001 and 2007, employment of scientists and engineers fell from 1.9 million to 1.7 million workers, a 10.7 percent drop. Employment of all manufacturing workers declined from 17.3 million to 15 million workers, a 13.2 percent drop.

The manufacturing sectors hit hardest by the trade deficit with China included computers and electronics, apparel and accessories (153,000 jobs) and fabricated metal products (102,000). Service sectors like administrative support services (139,000) and professional, scientific and technical services (128,000) also saw large job displacement because of the China trade deficit, according to the EPI.

"Rapidly growing imports of computers and electronic parts accounted for almost half of the $178 billion increase in the U.S. trade deficit with China between 2001 and 2007," the EPI reported. "The $68 billion deficit in advanced technology products with China in 2007 was responsible for more than 25 percent of the total U.S.-China trade deficit.

"The growth of this deficit eliminated 561,000 U.S. jobs in computer and electronic products in this period," the report continued.

More than a quarter of last year's trade deficit alone, $68 billion, was due to advanced technology products, nearly six times the deficit in 2002. In contrast, the U.S. has a $15 billion trade surplus with the rest of the world in advanced tech products.

On Tuesday, the day before the EPI published its report, marathon world trade talks aimed at liberalizing global trade collapsed.

After little more than a week of high-level talks, discussions reached an impasse when the U.S., China and India failed to find a compromise over a proposal to protect farmers in developing countries from greater liberalization of trade by allowing developing nations special "safeguard" tariffs to shield their farmers from unrestricted low-price imports.

The talks have repeatedly collapsed as developed countries failed to agree with developing nations on terms of access to each others' markets. While the U.S. and the European Union want greater access to provide services to fast-growing emerging countries, including China and India, developing countries want greater access for their agricultural products in Europe and the U.S.

"The collapse of the talks will not bring an end to world trade, of course, which will continue under current agreements, many of which are between two or more countries rather than under the World Trade Organization," the New York Times said of Tuesday's development. "But it is a big setback, particularly to the hopes of smaller and poorer developing countries, which were counting on gaining greater access to consumers in the United States, Europe and Japan."