People on here seem completely oblivious to whats going on in many areas of the white collar job market (software, accounting, customer support, etc). Companies are doing the office work equivalent to what they did in the 1980s/90s/2000s with manufacturing jobs. They sent them overseas:
From 1998 to 2021, the U.S. lost more than 5 million manufacturing jobs thanks to the growing trade deficit in manufactured goods with China, Japan, Mexico, the European Union, and other countries.
Typical responses when i make this point and why they dont hold weight:
Offshore stuff is garbage quality! It will eventually come back to onshore
-No, look at the history of manufacturing jobs moving overseas the cheaper countries. The same argument was said with Made in China good when jobs were first sent there. At first, quality of good was bad when made in these countries but over time improved to the point where now complex electronics, cars, and everything in between is now made in Asia. Companies were willing to accept this diminished quality while production ramped up since the cost savings were so great. Same exact thing is happening to software development.
But this only applies to lower level jobs, senior jobs are safe!
-Nope, not what im seeing. At my company there are hiring senior architects, directors and alike out of India. Heard of similar for PMs, finance directors, and HR as well. Def not just junior level positions.
Wait until interest rates come down, things will improve!
-Seriously, when have corporations ever given up significant profits via cost savings? Do you really think they will willing increase their labor costs once interests rates drop a little and make their bottom line look even worse next quarter?
Point is you need to make noise and do SOMETHING or nothing will change.
How is the economy keeping afloat with all the massive outsourcing/offshoring of jobs?
byu/chromium50 ineconomy
by chromium50
6 comments
Because we are predominantly a consumer economy. Living a standard of life not that is not consistent with robust savings and a balanced trade relationship but increasing debt. As long as we consume with the power of the dollar as the reserve currency, we’ll be okay. If that Petro dollar status is threatened, then the US will simply respond with force. This is why BRICS is the scariest thing we are dealing with. Any Crypto or new currency transition that takes place it will mean nations will dump US bonds out of fear and the US economy will collapse. I believe it unavoidable.
It’s only good for the folks at the top. For the lower 70% we’re basically in a jobs recession and wages are stagnant while costs skyrocket.
First of all, US is the #2 largest manufacturer in the world just behind China. Yes, we’ve outsourced a lot of jobs but we also created a lot of new jobs. The manufacturing jobs in the US tend to be high skilled while the jobs that got outsourced tend to be low skill.
Yes, some white collar jobs will be outsourced. This has happened in the mid 2000s with software but a funny thing happened – they came back with a vengeance. Why are Google, Apple, Amazon, Microsoft, Facebook, and many other companies put their labor focus in the US? Do they not know that they can save a lot of money using primarily programmers from India? This is all due to the lesson of Myspace – a once dominant social media company who insisted on going cheap. They insisted on using cheap out of the box technology, staying out of Silicon Valley where they could have hired talented technologists, and hiring cheaper second rate programmers in the US and outsourced jobs outside of the border. By saving a few millions a year, they lost out on hundreds of billions to Facebook, who happily hogged talent in the Silicon Valley and quickly kicked Myspace to the curb.
Why outsourcing knowledge jobs is much harder vs low skill manufacturing jobs is that ultimately just a little drop in talent can mean the difference between winning and losing.
The key point here is yes, there will be fierce competition from the rest of the world. Yes, there will be talented workers outside of US who will work for less. But workers in the US will always have a built-in advantage because the money, the business, the operation, and the knowledge originates here. It is our job to outcompete them. As long as we can do that, enough jobs will stay in the US. Also, it’s not outsourcing to foreigners that one should worry about, it’s outsourcing to AI. Because while AI is still in its infancy and has a long way to go, it ultimately has the potential to outcompete all humans; at least in certain industries.
Don’t forget the crazy amount of credit card debt.
Okay, has anyone listened to Kamala? She is addressing these problems . Please listen to her.
Corporations are still making billions. It’s not taxes from citizens that keep a country afloat.