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Many companies, like Credit Suisse with the Raleigh office, have tried that. They have found that while these areas are low-cost, they can’t find the qualified employees they need there. They try recruiting on the national market, but the skilled guys don’t want to take a pay cut to move there, even if the cost of living is lower.

They have found that while these areas are low-cost, they can't find the qualified employees they need there at the price they were willing to pay

They could have got people to move there at the right price. Don't BS me. It is called supply and demand. I am not tolerating any offshoring excuses. Screw them all. You want socialism? If corporate America, our supposed friends on the right, have their way we will get there a lot sooner with them leading the way than any democratic congress.

It really depends on how fussy they are. Your observations are right if they insist on people with Ivy League pedigrees.

Much less so if they are willing to take people from places like Penn State, Northwestern or Brigham Young.

There are scores of top ranked finance people in places like Wilmington (Delaware), Salt Lake City, Houston and Sioux Falls.

Even our local market of Pittsburgh has its fair share, but again not too many Ivy League types, who turn up their nose at a provincial fly-over town like ours, even though we also have some of the top-ranked universities in the country, including Carnegie-Mellon and University of Pittsburgh.

Another funny thing about the Pittsburgh market is that even with all the big name banks here (PNC, Dollar Bank, Mellon, Citizens) the market is still underserved because they don't care to write loans to locals unless (a)their loans are jumbo sized or (b)their credit is near perfect. So one of the biggest mortgage loan writers is Flagstar Bank, which moved in from Michigan just to write the loans which the locals pass on.

Many companies, like Credit Suisse with the Raleigh office, have tried that. They have found that while these areas are low-cost, they can't find the qualified employees they need there. They try recruiting on the national market, but the skilled guys don't want to take a pay cut to move there, even if the cost of living is lower.

That is true

I work for a very large company and was at a client in Raleigh, NC this past summer. They were moving a datacenter from New Jersey to Raleigh and in the process were losing many of their engineering team because they didn't want to relocate.

That said, they will manage and the cost savings is not just in employees. Another customer moving a datacenter from the northeast into the Raleigh area is seeing their electric rates (huge datacenter cost) drop from over $.14 per KWh to around $.05. That adds up fast.