U.S. Jobs Jumping Ship

An anonymous reader writes "As painful as February's big job cuts were, they're even more painful since many of those jobs are never coming back as U.S. employers in a wide range of industries move more and more jobs overseas. CNN has the story." Salon has a good piece detailing how job requirements are changing, asking more and more for less and less pay.

Re:If foreigners are better workers, so what?

[4doorGL]

It's usually not a matter of working better, rather they can hire 'foreigners' for much cheaper than their trained American counterparts :-/

Trend

[truthsearch]

I agree. I just want to add that the trend's been here for a while, it's just now hitting a larger mass of people and multiple industries. Manufacturing (textiles) has been moving overseas for over a decade. NAFTA helped speed this up with Mexico. Now that mass amounts of our industrial work is done overseas it's moving into more diverse fields, like telephone support and software development. The more expensive we make it to do business here, and the more we lock employers into taking care of employees for their lifetime (unions), the more companies will look overseas.

Re:I hate to point fingers but...

[release7]

Perhaps there is a tradeoff to unionized auto workers getting paid 20$ an hour for working basic assembly lines? Or mandatory health benefits for full time workers?

Let's see, the unionization rate is around 12% in the private sector, the lowest rate it's been in 80 years, down from 35% in the 1950s. And over 40 million Americans go without healthcare, an all time high. I think you have it ass backwards, my friend. It's precisely because workers don't have enough power and clout to protect their own interests that we find ourselves in the straits we're in.

It's Not About The Money

[Anonymous Coward]

Let me say first that I'm posting this as an AC, not because I'm hiding from what I'm about to say, but because there are people in my company who know my Slashdot nick and will probably read this.

I work for a split nationality company based in the US and the UK. Recently we have been hiring Indians as contractors to add to our permanent staff. We also laid off a lot of US coders at the same time. The reason? The Indians are better. Pure and simple. They come from a background of getting things done. The US coders preferred to have have meetings about meetings and in the end produced over-engineered bloatware. The Indians would have produced the software for beta testing before the US staff had finished their multiple rounds of meetings.

It is important to note that I'm not attacking the individual prowess of the coders themselves, more the working culture they are used to. It's a management driven culture with too much beaurocracy and red tape and not enough flexibility. Most of the junior coders ambition was to get into management and earn themselves more money, not to enjoy the challenge of coding in the first place. Indian coders are a breath of fresh air in comparison. They enjoy the challenge and are driven by knowledge, not money and power.

Re:and I'm glad we still have H1B's galore

[The Turd Report]

http://www.h1b.info

Re:I hate to point fingers but...

[JordanH]

• • There was a senator or rep who was a staunch Democrat who, when he retired, tried to start a small business (a hotel I think). His business floundered because of many of the extremely harsh policies that he himself had pushed.
  Yeah, a story like that has to be true. No one every makes come-uppance tales about people of different opinions to show them suffering from their misguided ways.

In this case, the story is true [inc.com].

Re:Estate of the Nation

[jaaron]

Remember when Japan was selling hundreds of billions of dollars of goods to the USA for years? If they made so much money, why is their economy in the dump? They were so fantasitcally wealthy they were buying up motion picture studios, golf courses, farms (to raise cattle for export back to Japan), banks, you name it. Problem was, they made such good stuff and their standard of living went up so high they priced themselves right out of the market. Other countries are repeating the cycle. The USA seems to survive because it reinvents itself. Probably medical is the next big thing.

Actually, the Japanese economy is in the dumps because of a bad banking sector. It was due to government interferrance and bad banking laws that allowed for huge amounts of bad debt to pile up. It has little, if anything, to do with "pricing themselves out of the market".

'Dear CEO: Is this really what you want?'

[Reductionist]

I'm sure I'll get flamed by the libertarian free-market fanatics for posting this, but this is the truth and it needs to be heard.

Ernest Partridge: 'Dear CEO: Is this really what you want?'

By Ernest Partridge, The Crisis Papers [crisispapers.org] [crisispapers.org]

An open letter to the Chief Executive Officers of the Fortune 500 companies, and of the major commercial media.

Dear CEO,

Congratulations! You have won, decisively and overwhelmingly.

Your favored politicians and political party are now in control of all three branches of the United States government. Your political and economic ideologies, preached virtually without rebuttal in your media, have been enacted by law, executive order and judicial decree. And those ideologies are destined to be solidified as federal judges who endorse these ideologies come to dominate the federal judiciary.

As a result of your victory, the Congress of the United States now follows the dictates of its corporate "sponsors," and is thus no longer responsive to the wishes and interests of its constituents. The Federal regulatory agencies the EPA, the FCC, the SEC, the FDA, etc. have become the captives, and virtual subsidiaries, of the industries that they were intended to regulate.

Thanks to "your" Administration and Congress, and the unchallenged political message of "your" media, the fortunate wealthy few, like yourself, are the beneficiaries of "tax reform" legislation which accelerates the flow of national wealth from the vast majority of our population which produces that wealth, to those of you who own and control that wealth. That same tax policy is producing enormous deficits in the federal budget and an increase in the national debt that will likely bankrupt the Social Security and Medicare trust funds, and burden our children and grandchildren essentially forever. But, of course, none of that directly affects you and yours.

All in all, you have received from the incumbent Administration and Congress, an overwhelmingly favorable return on your investment in campaign funds.

However, I must wonder if you have carefully assessed the larger return on this investment, the full consequences of your complete political victory.

If you do, I suspect that you may discover that yours has been a pyrrhic victory. You might, on reflection, decide that you do not really want the prize that you have won. You may in fact have reaped a whirlwind so dreadful that you may wish, while there is still time, to make corrections or even, dare I say, reparations.

One might urge you to reassess your "victory" and your continuing course of political action on grounds of morality, of religion, or of political tradition. Instead, I would ask you to assess the current political condition in the United States from the perspective of that central principle of the dominant economic theory: the principle of self-interest.

From the perspective of self-interest alone, I would submit that all that you have won may be much less than meets the eye, and that this accomplishment might even contains the seeds of its own destruction, and of your ruin.


The Economy: At the Democratic convention of 2000, Senator Joseph Lieberman, the finest Republican mind in the Democratic Party, quoted Harry Truman: "to live like a Republican, vote like a Democrat." This is more than a partisan slogan, it is history. Mark Hulbert reports, in CBS Market Watch [smirkingchimp.com][smirkingchimp.com] that "since 1901, the Dow Jones Industrial Averages average annual gain, after inflation, has been nearly twice as high when a Democrat has occupied the White House."

But if the history of the last century is unconvincing, just think back to the past decade. While its true that the Bush Administration and the Republican Congress have given you

File this under "duh"

[MImeKillEr]

'Cmon. How can /. be so far behind on this story?

For those of us in the industry, go check out TechsUnite.org [techsunite.org] for info on what we can do to have our voices heard on this matter.

To me, its just as important to be a member of TechsUnite as it is the EFF.

Where do you live?

[raygundan]

Dude, you need to move out of brooklyn. Or the valley. Or wherever it is you're living that costs are that high. And stop looking at BMWs.

A nice, new Honda Accord is less than 1/4 the national average household income. A house in a less inflated real-estate market should work well for you also. $120K for 4 bedrooms here in Indiana, and interest rates are rock-bottom.

For the record, the average household income in 2002 for the whole US was $58K [washpost.com]. Your numbers for the value of stuff in the 70s are still true today. 1/3 of $58K is a little over $19K. Plenty for a new car. Houses start at only a little more than 1x that here! Lots of small houses in the $85-$90K range. Huge houses (by valley/nyc standards) are available for $150K.

Re:Huh?

[ChaoticChaos]

I won't try to educate you about what impact Iraq is having on the economy. You desperately need to surf out to http://www.wsj.com

Comment removed

[account_deleted]

Comment removed based on user account deletion

Re:NOT a free trade world

[beakburke]

Actually thats wrong, the US is uncompetitive in steel because our steel mills use much older technology and they produce types of steel whose demand has fallen. Also, the european steel industry was distroyed by WWII and rebuilt just when new technologies came online. US steel companies lagged behind the trend, and most of these older american steel companies have been uncompetitive for that very reason. If you want to get on the EU about subsidies then lets talk about farming, which is what the EU subsidizes most heavily. They have the highest farm subsidies in the world, which has the effect of driving down the price for everyone else. The US recently increased their farm disaster aid but is still not as high as the EU, but they are getting close to Canadian levels now.

Re:NOT a free trade world

[GlassHeart]

When there is truly a level playing field, sign me up.

Level playing field? Do you also send your competition a copy of your source code, so you can compete fairly?

By and large, American multinationals enter foreign markets with a million times the capital of local players. They can afford to outspend any local player in terms of advertising, if not something actually underhanded like pricing below cost or even bribery. Generally, the only local players that can still compete are entrenched monopolies with deep government connections (who are, needless to say, not really good for their economies either). Where's the level playing field in this "global market"?

As for health care and environment in the third world, remember that the US doesn't exactly have clean hands here. Rather than supporting reform and development, the US routinely supported despots who plundered their economies. The US is at least partially responsible for the gap between rich and poor countries, despite the billions in foreign aid (which frequently served more to keep despots in power than anything else). Not to mention that the US just backed out of the Kyoto Accord to protect its industrial polluters.

And now you want a level playing field against citizens of a poor nation who finally managed to get a college education. And you think the playing field isn't level because they're too poor to demand everything you want. I think what you really want is an advantage, not a level playing field.

I'm not saying this is payback. Just that life isn't really fair, and you (the average American) haven't really been at the receiving end of too much injustice until perhaps now, so don't be too... uh...

Whiny.

Re:Protectionism

[JarJarlicious]

As it is, I'm competing with foreign workers, college educated (at no cost to themselves generally, or they're from one of the few wealthy families in their home region,) who are willing to do the same job for less money because they don't care about having an american standard of living even tho they're living in america, and they aren't as deep in debt as I am from student loans.

I'm not sure what you think "an american standard of living" is, but if they can live in the same country for less, maybe you have an inflated sense of how you should be able to live. Compared to the much of rest of the world, a small crappy apartment in Albany is pretty damn nice.

I'd love to spend a few years working in another country. Australia? Yeah.... I can work for three months at a time.

Unless things in Australia have changed in the past two months, you can get skilled immigration status without having a job offer. Just have the right skills and experience and they'll let you move right over and start the process of becoming an Australian citizen. Or you can get a sponsored job offer and stay indefinitely.

When I actually CAN 'follow the jobs' the way people from other countries can, we can talk.

Okay, let's talk.

Re:Loss of jobs and a nightmare thread of thought

[swordgeek]

OK unlike most of the other pro-US comments, this one isn't stupid, rabid, paranoid, or racist.

However, I still think it's wrong.

Let me throw some company's names at you: Sony. Hitachi. Toshiba. JVC.

How much of the technology of the last 40 years has come from the US and how much from Japan? I'd say the US has the edge, but not by much, and certainly not a VAST edge.

So there's advanced technology (including R&D) in Japan. And in India. US companies are outsourcing there, to their own subsidiaries which pay about 5x what local companies can pay. (which is still 1/7 what they'd have to pay local Americans.) Those workers CAN'T easily walk away from the jobs because they won't be able to afford it. (Fundamental rule of economics: Whatever your salary, you can't go back again. As a general and broad rule, it's almost flawless). If they do, and nobody else is skilled enough and willing enough to step up to the plate and get paid 5x what they were yesterday, then the companies have no choice but to bring the work back into the US. And hire US workers again.

Unlike with oil, this is possible with skills. In fact, moving the resources around the world is dead simple when you're dealing with people and skills, instead of fixed items (oil, lumber, etc.). This is not that alarming of an issue.

Besides, this is a period of transition. Every time there's a period of transition (particularly true in the US right now--more than any country or time since WWII), people get worried about how it will destroy the entire economy. It doesn't. The economy plods along, new jobs become available (witness the HUGE tech market, when it was once expected that high-tech would make 3/4 of the workforce unemployed), and society changes. Yes if YOU get laid off, then it's hard on YOU and your family. Not the country though, you.

As a final note, I take exception to your last comment:

"We need to show what made the United States a great country - hard work, perserverance, and a good brain."

When the US was a great country (I'll withhold judgement for the moment on whether it still is), these three were crucial factors--along with personal responsibilty. Nowadays however, the US is notorious for demanding instant gratification, and not being willing to work for it. YOu've still got good brains, but your politicians and media would LOVE to destroy them. When you have zero out of three (or four), then what?

Frankly, I'd worry much more about your psychotic lying dictator and the xenophobic media you have than any long-term job drain. They're going to destroy the US far faster and more effectively than a help desk in India.

People aren't getting it

[alizard]

I'm really amazed at the number of people on all sides of the political spectrum who can't figure out what's going on around them. Foriegn outsourcing is not about corporate survival except in companies with a historic record of mismanagement. Let's say you're making millions of units of almost any mass market item a year. The difference between the cost of doing R&D here and in India spread over X-million units is fairly trivial. A recent article quotes a CEO as saying that he expects a problem with Indian competition 10 years from now, but this is saving him money now... what's implied is that 10 years from now will be someone else's problem.

This is about notching up earnings in a down economy so CEOs can make the profit targets which will enable their next batch of stock options. It's the same sort of thing that has produced Enron-style shell games to inflate reported profits.

Like just about everything else that's been going on in the last few years at the large corporate level, it's about short-term maximation of profits. Not for the stockholders, for the CEOs themselves. The stockholders aren't going to know when to dump their stock to get maximum value for it. The CEOs don't have the slightest interest in their employeess, the health of the nation or the communities in which they're doing business, profit for the stockholders or building good companies anymore. "The commons" is just something to privatise a chunk of and strip-mine that chunk until it's worthless.

This is hardly surprising. When one's main form of compensation is based on meeting quarterly profit or stock price targets, one doesn't want to invest in long-term R&D or employees or anything that might conceivably interfere with making the next batch of stock options kick in. Doing anything interesting and creative that doesn't show an immediate return is the sort of thing that makes investment analysts who generally don't understand what the companies that they advise about do real unhappy. Make them unhappy and the stock price drops. The stock one previously got in compensation drops in value... along with the CEO's personal net worth.

Why hasn't private industry built a space infrastructure capable of supporting things like a powersat network supplying enough energy to make Middle East oil permanently obsolete? In general, the present corporate business model can't support major projects that would take 10 years to provide a return on investment. A typical Fortune 500 CEO isn't going to start a project that's going to do nothing for him but make a successor look real good.

The funniest part about this is that the CEOs doing this appear to be under the impression that India is just another bunch of burbs whose residents talk funny, have an interesting ethnic cuisine and work real cheap.

[Note 1] They are normally on the edge of nuclear war with their Muslim neighbor, Pakistan, mainly over religious hostility. The dominant religious grouping (Hindus) is calling for the expulsion of Muslims. Poor Muslims are being physically pushed into Bangladesh.

Message: 10
Date: Fri, 14 Mar 2003 11:08:10 -0500 (EST)
From: "IntellNet"
Subject: News Flash: Ten killed as bomb rips rail coach in Bombay [globeandmail.com]

Ten people were killed and 75 hurt yesterday when a bomb blew up on a train packed with homebound commuters in Bombay, the deadliest in a spate of blasts in India's financial capital in recent months.

Note 1 - to read this kind of happy fun news yourself, subscribe to OSINT-L [mailto], the Open Sources Intelligence mailing list.

What I describe is business as usual.

Third World generally translates as "powder keg".

However, the CEOs who are doing this know that if they lose their bet and one of their call centers disappears in a conve

Re:and I'm glad we still have H1B's galore

[mrlpz]

You understand, of course, that Bill Gates once threatened..actually threatened the US government with picking up, lock, stock and barrel and moving across the border, just so he could get his fill of H1B's....

Then again....having been out of work myself for almost 8 months back in 2002...and then seeing the sorts of resumes' being thrashed around by some folks today, I can almost ( al..most ) understand some prospective employers apprehensions at hiring tech folks...

But for sure, the requirements being put out today, are just shy of insane. HR folks act out as though they're running their little fiefdoms'. Recruiters ( gotta bless their little hearts ), act like agents, only bothering to help you out, if they think they'll get the biggest percentage. Luckily, I persevered, and from the sounds of it, I've faired better than most. [Knock on silicon] Still, I salute fuckthatjob.com, they're providing an invaluable service.