A new study by the Hackett group indicates that even more jobs are at risk to offshoring than I have previously reported. Hackett is indicating that 750,00 more IT and Finance jobs will be lost to offshoring between now and 2016.
The good news? This offshoring trend will begin to decrease by 2014 and will actually hit zero jobs lost to offshoring by 2022. Why will this happen? Because corporations by that time will have run out of jobs that they can move offshore. Offshoring and Outsourcing aren’t the only reasons we are losing tech jobs here in the US. Automation and and productivity improvements will have accounted for the loss of 2.2 million IT jobs between 2006 and 2016.
The numbers above are based on a survey of 4700 companies with annual revenues that exceed 1 billion dollars. With this in mind these numbers are really understated since there are thousands of corporations that have revenues in the hundreds of millions.
The IT job landscape will continue to be fluid and hard to navigate due to technological change, Offshoring and Outsourcing, and Automation. Even when offshoring and outsourcing decrease by 2022, corporations are going to be under heavy pressure to cut costs in other ways. Expect to see a ramp up of automation projects and business process improvement projects that will continue to put pressure on well paying service jobs. This is why I believe IT’ers need to grab the bull by the horns and come up with alternate methods of generating income.
I have been recommending Internet Marketing for a number of reasons, first, the skillsets required in each are compatible, second, even though IM is subject to same issues noted above, you are in charge of your own destiny and are more flexible as an individual than if you worked for a corporation. In fact when it comes to automation, the independent IM’er will be a beneficiary. Same for offshoring, the successful IM’er can begin to offshore simple and repetitve tasks to low labor countries. It really comes down to this, do you want your financial fate in the hands of corporations that could care less about your financial well being, or in your own hands.
Such a paranoid and dgaparsiing, if not racist post. And an incorrect one at that too! You don’t understand the business basics and the capitalism that YOU introduced in the so-called Third World Countries. Why is it your prerogative to have plush jobs when you have people who can do the job as good, if not better as you can at half your price? You wouldn’t buy a computer at $1200 at store X if store Y is giving the same for $600. Would you? Oh, well. Don’t answer that. I’ve done shopping around Thanksgiving Day!You reap what you sow. Americans have been pampered for far too long without lack of decent competition from the rest of the world. For years, the US companies made killing in non-US markets fuelling job growth in US. It was not YOUR job to begin with. The people in the rest of the world that US companies are selling to, paid for your bloated salaries. Now that the rest of the world that has more than half of world’s population, which was pushed and pushed and pushed by US to open markets, is learning to play the capitalism game by competing with efficiency and innovative business models, you are crying foul. News Flash! America is NOT the world! Bunch of hypocrites, you are!An American job outsourced does not necessarily equate Tax Evasion. Are you paying restitution for the families and traditional economies that US companies destroyed in the “third world”? Would you rather the American jobs are eliminated altogether when the business model is not viable and competition is trampling the company? Or would you have the company survive by any means and continue to create required jobs, make profits AND reward shareholders? If you were to levy service taxes etc, why shouldn’t the other countries levy similar taxes where US companies are killing traditional economies in the countries?Someone told us that you either be competitive or perish. Oh, wait! That was you, America!
If you notice, I am not trying to get the US to regulate away offshoring. I am trying to get IT workers in the US and Europe to understand the dynamics of Globalism and understand that it is inevitiable. We are now in a stage where jobs are inevitably going to flow out of the US and the EU precisely because of the competition you mention. It will not end until a global equilibrium is attained. In the short term a lot of IT workers here are going to be in a bad spot, and I am pointing out that Internet Marketing may be a way out for them. I don’t think we disagree about anything here. I just don’t want anybody to be naive and think that their job is safe, when it isn’t. We are going through a period of disruptive change and it is going to effect everyone. At some point IT in India will be overpriced compared to Brazil or Kenya, and then IT workers in India will be facing the same problems as those in the US and EU. Bottom line, from a Macro perspective this process is going to level the playing field but at a Micro level it is going to be painful for a lot of people. One last thing to keep in mind in all of this is that corporations are nobody’s friend.