JOB DROUGHT CONTINUES (Paul Craig Roberts; he's wrong, right? The US isn't losing steam, is it?)

Creators ^ | Ap 6 05 | Paul Craig Roberts

[churchillbuff]

I want to believe that Paul Craig Roberts has turned into a reflexive pessimist, but the numbers he puts up there don't look encouraging (as to US creation of high-end jobs). I know that outsourcing of high-tech work has had an effect on job prospects of people in my own extended family. But I'm not an economist. Someone who is - please give a cogent argument against Roberts (name-calling might be fun, but I'd like to see his arguments answered point by point). Anyone?

[Darkwolf377]

"Outsourcing is labor arbitrage."

I'm no fan of outsourcing but it's rapidly becoming an urban myth that we've outsourced most of the jobs in the nation. Last I checked it was in the low single percent.

[ClearCase_guy]

How odd. This article never touches on the unemployment rate.

Fact: The unemployment rate dropped from 5.4 to 5.2.
Fact: When the rate is dropping, we're going in the right direction.
Fact: 5.2 is a wonderfully low unemployment rate -- Europe would kill for that.

[One Proud Dad]

The ones that go will come back when the consuner starts to complain about heavy accents and such.

The security issue hasn't begun to be addressed in regards to sensitive personal ( ie taxes ) or company info being in the hands of someone in a country in which we have no prosecutorial authority.

[churchillbuff]

This article never touches on the unemployment rate."""

No, it focuses on the kinds of jobs -- and his numbers says they're low-end. I know that people in my family who trained for high-tech can get other (less paying) jobs. What Roberts is pointing out is that the tech jobs are going overseas.

[Pondman88]

Haven't we been moving toward a service economy for decades? Plumbers, auto mechanics, tradesmen command lots of money yet they are begging for more workers. I also have heard that mfg jobs have stabilised and in some areas are increasing. The days of working at the factory are long gone. Most economists are pessimists.

[Pondman88]

Haven't we been moving toward a service economy for decades? Plumbers, auto mechanics, tradesmen command lots of money yet they are begging for more workers. I also have heard that mfg jobs have stabilised and in some areas are increasing. The days of working at the factory are long gone. Most economists are pessimists.

[zippee]

I know engineers in their 30s with excellent experience who have been out of work since their jobs were outsourced four or five years ago. One is moving to Thailand to take a job in an outsourcing operation at $875 a month.

That's funny. You mean we have to move to India to get a job in a USA company?

[thoughtomator]

I'm in IT. I just finished a job search. All I did was post my resume on monster.com. I got a new call every single day for good-paying work, it took all of a month total from starting the search to signing the contract. From my experience, this job environment is much better for US IT workers than we had in 2002-3. People are starting to understand the downsides of outsourcing, and foreign workers can't get enough visas to claim the same share of IT jobs that they had in the recent past.

I've decided that economists simply can't be believed. They all have investments of their own, and they have a financial incentive to make public statements that could improve the performance of those investments.

[G32]

Not a joke, this country is heading down the tubes job-wise. Third world, here we come. It's getting almost too late to do a thing about it.

[Pondman88]

I know an IT guy, whose company outsourced some stuff to India. Well after the Indians screwed up the contract, took them twice as long to perform with triple the workers and the time zone diffrence, the company moved the work back herer.

[Wayne07]

The ones that go will come back when the consuner starts to complain about heavy accents and such. The security issue hasn't begun to be addressed in regards to sensitive personal ( ie taxes ) or company info being in the hands of someone in a country in which we have no prosecutorial authority. Having called Dell support in India, I agree the "call center" outsourcing is a bad idea, and may end up back in the US. That being said, those are crappy jobs anyway. I think the interesting and problematic issue raised is that the R&D jobs are going abroad. There is no direct consumer interaction involved, so there won't be any customer service need to bring those jobs back. And those are the good jobs.

[discostu]

According to this report
http://www.bls.gov/news.release/empsit.nr0.htm

Average hourly earnings went up 4 cents in March, hard to believe that happened if all the new jobs were low end.

The tech overseas push is ending. Too many failed projects, too many customer complaints, secondary costs are too high.

[thoughtomator]

Yep... the cultural differences alone are enough to have a large impact on performance, and that is almost never taken into full account.

[KevinDavis]

Translation: The market is working..

[KevinDavis]

Why do you have one?? Since when a job is a right??

[dfwgator]

Not outsourcing necessarily, but just look around the IT departments at most US corporations in US-based offices. Let's just say that native US citizens are definately a minority.

[KevinDavis]

We're doomed!!!! Unless we have the government in how to run a business correct??

[One Proud Dad]

Maybe to a degree, but I think that Penwar the engineer in India may be a sharp mathematical wizard but doesn't have a clue on what Americans need or want. Somethings will come back.

Anything that has to do with defense or nuclear energy should be covered by law as un-outsourcable.