Answer ‘“ not all jobs, but a lot of them have.
Historically, due to labor shortage in the United States, it is feasible and even preferable to outsource unskilled, manual labors to immigrants, or cheaper labor in other countries, so that Americans can continue to enjoy their relatively higher standard of living while maintaining high productivity.
Yet today, the jobs that are outsourced, intentionally or not, seem to touch on more skilled labor pools. Jobs like auto manufacturing, computer software design and development that shape the face of corporations, have had more success in their overseas development centers than in the United States. As the US willingly opens its door to foreign competition and accept these products that are foreign made, while the labor costs domestically are hindered by labor and regulatory burdens, the US labor market is facing competition from abroad unseen decades ago.
Are these labor laws and protections likely to go away? Not in the traditional industries such as auto, education or healthcare. Industries that have established labor unions are likely to stay the same way and the adjustments of their labor force into other industries are then necessarily slow. It is a feature of the American labor market, that blue collar works are more protected in other countries, and we do not necessarily wish this not to be the case. At the same time, given the absence of these labor benefits in other nations, and therefore lower cost of labor, the US government should necessarily update their trade terms with these countries to prevent unfair competition that would inevitably result in US companies demise.
This is a pertinent area to be addressed.
The other area in labor to be addressed is the outflow of white collar, skilled jobs. Most of these jobs are non unionized, and in areas such as high tech where the advent of telecommunications and the internet had facilitated the possibility of such, if the workers at the other locations are willing to work odd hours to match the working business hours in the U.S.. With the outflow of these jobs, the outflow of managerial positions connected to these jobs necessarily will also be outsourced over time.
Policy makers should really think about, is this what you d like America s future to be like? For American industries to be semi-controlled by foreign nationals who have access to sensitive, highly confidential company information and for American industries to be dependent on them for services? Will the U.S. still have the know-how overtime to be self-sufficient or is dependency on foreign nationals going to grow overtime?
Not to mention, that the current U.S. labor market is suffering high unemployment right now, should such practice and trend be continued unchecked, while the U.S. s labor pool continue to suffer from job displacement?
There has been investments made on the labor capital in the U.S., as the U.S. has one of the highest education expense per capita, and the U.S. education system still reigns as some of the world s best. At the same time, the message that the corporate is giving ‘“ to readily hand out and allow outflow of both blue and white collar jobs to foreign sources, due to their cheaper wages necessarily justified by the cheaper education elsewhere, is a show of waste for American educated, and not giving American labor pool a fair chance.
We need to look into this harder, examine this closer, or America s strategic leadership in the world may be replaced.
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{ 2 comments… read them below or add one }
I think you know as well as I the real reason for the job outflow is cheap labor abroad. It’s interesting that the word “entitlement” seems to have really caught on, as you have brought it up also here. If this was not a true phenomenon I doubt that this word would even survived the popular culture. But it is real. People should really step back and come more solution oriented.
I can tell you from experience that the excuse for sending jobs over seas has been a lack of talent in the current labor pool. Especially in the Tech sector. The last team I worked with was completely H1B visa workers. As you rightly point out, no solutions to the problem has been put forth, other than extending benefits and cobra. Unfortunately, people would rather play XBox than code for XBox, linux, Ubuntu, C#, or SQL. The leadership has been lacking in this area concerning rising unemployment. Until more of the public speaks out against the rising unemployment, I’m concerned that nothing will be done. The Government is too busy working on more entitlements, the Olympics to bother with unemployment or even Afghanistan at this point. This is what we get from transitioning a country of producers to a country of consumers.