Some stats on outsourcing: interesting.

[Undecided]

Here are some simple stats on outsourcing of jobs:

"While the U.S. lost 234,000 IT jobs in 2003, for Indian techies 152,000 new jobs were created." (The Economic Times)
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"...the Department of Labor estimates (the North American Free Trade Agreement or NAFTA) was responsible for the loss of more than 500,000 U.S. jobs between 1994 and 2002." (Time Magazine )
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"Some 200,000 to 300,000 jobs could end up being shipped offshore this year..." (eCommerce Times February 2004 )
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"Nonmilitary government clients were the biggest outsourcing customers last year, with $18.5 billion in contracts. The defense sector finished a close second at $18.2 billion." (IBD)
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"...at least 3.3 million white-collar jobs and $136 billion in wages will shift from the United States to low-cost countries by 2015. " (Forrester Research )
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"...60% of Fortune 1000 companies have yet to do any offshore IT outsourcing, and that the overseas movement within these companies is slow."(Forrester Research )
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"Analysts predict that as many as 2 million U.S. white-collar jobs such as programmers, software engineers and application designers will shift to low-cost centers by 2014." (Reuters)
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"... 20% of outsourcing deals do not produce cost savings...10% of those deals actually wind up increasing costs."
"... this year alone 50% of all outsourcing projects will fall short of delivering expected value and will be deemed unsuccessful." (Gartner Group)
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"About 14 million jobs, or 11% of the US total, have been identified as at risk of being sent abroad." (McKinsey & Co.)

I support Globalization but how can this be translated to the general public? Is it even realistic to expect the population to merely accept outsourcing when millions of jobs in the range of 3.3 million – 15 million could be gone? Is outsourcing even that big of a deal, there are other much more important factors that decide the US jobs market like productivity, and tech. So is all the hype, just that?

[DOS]

I voted other because in some cases it could be favorable iff the textbook definition of comparitive advantage applies and the person to whom it is outsourced to receives "fair" compensation for their labor. Outsourcing to some lame-ass sweatshop is akin to slavery in which case I would vote BAD. Outsourcing MY job would of course be VERY VERY BAD :eek:

[Undecided]

But the world economy, and the host economy eventually benefits big time. Every country who today is a modern nation has gone through the "bad stages". Sure we wish that everyone could be paid the same, but we aren't.

[Tiassa]

I wanted to stick in here a bit--somewhat at random--about ad hominem.

Actually, it's not entirely random.

I heard a bit on Lou Dobbs the other night--and honestly, I'm not up for finding it in the transcripts right now; if it becomes important, I will--in which a teaser going to commercial promised a story about the indignity of American workers having to train their foreign outsourced replacements.

This is, insofar as I can tell, an ad hominem argument in the classical sense that it is easily confused with an appeal to emotion, and appeals to common but subjective values.

I suppose the question is, Is it a fair argument?

More toward the topic itself, I think Undecided has an important point: I support Globalization but how can this be translated to the general public?

One of the tricks in this confusion has to do with inventing new jobs to replace the old ones. Anther, of course, is how to maintain an excessive standard of living while allowing the rest of the world to catch up at least to necessity.

On the one hand, we will lose economy and jobs to fill in the deficits around the world. To the other, we stand to spend much labor and economy fighting the wars of the future as people continue to resent a system which demands the poverty of the many to support the excesses of the few.

The only way out is to create so much new wealth that we can spread it without taking a hit against our own standard of living.

And that's just not realistic, especially in light of the Chicken Little economy whipped up by the Bush administration.

They're not going to break even on the economy; whether or not people care is all a matter of how blinded they are by the wars we're failing to win around the globe.

It's kind of like asking a child to become a productive adult without investing anything in its education. You can only pull it off for so long, and you can only take it so far.

[otheadp]

nico, your stats only show the negative numbers
what about the positive things that came out of NAFTA?

i agree that globalization is ultimately positive - for everyone

as IT people in the US are pissed for losing their job, some farmers in the Far East are pissed too for losing their job
but the workers in both the US and Far East gained other advantages.. by concentrating on their own comparative advantages

as far as coming up with new jobs, there will always be jobs. inovation and new industries are always popping up and creating cyclical booms/busts

Outsourcing is ultimately good, because the forces of competition will ultimately reduce the price (wages) of IT jobs here, thus make it cheaper to do business... which will affect many industries whose costs of doing business will be brought down

some restructuring will have to take place, but it's only for the good of society

my dad said an interesting thing yesterday, as we were talking about outsourcing
"by the time the grass will grow, the horse will already be dead"

i hope the grass will grow in time ...

[Undecided]

nico, your stats only show the negative numbers
what about the positive things that came out of NAFTA?


None of those numbers had to do with NAFTA...ehrmmmm...? If you would like to provide some actual stats to show that's great. But please avoid the usual potty rhetoric’s.

[laughing weasel]

It will be rough for a while but the tough will rebound and it will end up making the entire world economy stronger.

[Undecided]

But the question is will it survive? The average American does not like to hear that their jobs are going to be outsourced, would any of us? It is easy for us to say that outsourcing is good (which it is). But to a father? Or a mother? How can they tell their kids that they can't afford x, because their jobs went overseas? The protectionist disease will spread very quickly, which is unfortunate because the majority of the job losses are due to productivity and tech. Shows like Lou Dobbs show the downside of outsourcing, but merely skims the benefits. For instance he constantly discusses the way that wages in real terms have fallen, but does not talk about the real prices for goods and their decline. It's a self-correcting system, and I suspect that Mr. Dobbs knows this. The question is whether or not the average American is wiling to pay for long term gain? Don’t you just hate populist economic policy?