Offshoring the Economy

[unixronin]

A sobering article in Fast Company magazine says that as many as 14 million jobs in the US could be offshored.  It's not just IT any more.  It's accountants, customer service reps, medical transcriptionists.

"More than just outsourcing IT or anyone's job, we're outsourcing the American middle class," says Bronstein.

I find myself increasingly thinking it's time to abandon both this career and this country, and find some other way to make a living, somewhere else.  I just don't know what.  I still don't know if I could handle the schooling to become a pharmacist.  I'm seriously considering retail; I'm told Home Despot pays $16 an hour.  Our friends wolfspaw and stoda already abandoned IT to become massage therapists.  And frankly, I seriously think that the US economy is going to crash as a result of offshoring -- the ultimate manifestation of the shortsighted Wall Street quest for short-term profit.

A partial list of Fast Company's "at risk" jobs:

• Extreme risk:  Accountant, industrial engineer, production control specialist, quality assurance engineer, helpdesk specialist, telemarketer
• High or moderate risk:  Automotive engineer, computer systems analyst, database administrator, software developer, customer-service representative, CAD technician, paralegal/legal assistant, medical transcriptionist, copy editor, journalist, film editor, insurance agent, lab technician, human resources specialist
• Low risk:  Aircraft mechanic, artist, carpenter, civil engineer, headhunter, interior designer

We're not just offshoring jobs:  We're offshoring our economy.

Comments

[unixronin.livejournal.com]

Well, they could quit working those hours. They could quit working for those people who they feel value them too little. That's essentially the balance, isn't it? "I work this job because I feel that the value I recieve for doing so offsets the effort I put into it."

Unfortunately, too often these days it's more a case of "I put up with this shit because I have nowhere else to go, it's this or flipping burgers." I know quite a few people who'd tell their current employers to FOAD at the drop of a hat if they had another job to go to, because they're being treated so badly.

And, realistically, when you consider the hours that people were being asked to work AND carry a pager for off-hours calls, I don't think a lot of those boom salaries were that unreasonable. I don't think the bubble was so much one of computer geeks as a whole getting overinflated salaries, as one of "entrepreneurs" touting overinflated business offerings with no grounding in reality, and stupid venture capitalists lining up to throw dumpster-loads of money at them on the mere promise that some day there would be a business plan and maybe even a product.