IT Outsourcing Need Not Threaten Our Future

Xeo writes "The topic of the moment in a lot of people's minds is the outsourcing overseas of 'white collar' jobs. While many people are perhaps rightfully worried about this, there's an editorial on the subject that tends towards the other direction. It makes some very interesting points on the whole idea of outsourcing and what it means for the US at least."

Comments

Another good article on this

[stry_cat]

A similar article can be found here Here's a brief quote from it.

A fundamental mistake made by the critics of outsourcing has been to confuse the passing pain of the IT recession with an alleged long-term decline in the sector. That mistake is compounded when current output and employment levels are compared with levels at the frenzied peak of the boom in 2000 rather than with more normal levels from the late 1990s. A more accurate and less alarming picture of the industry emerges if we compare the state of the industry a few years after the bubble burst with its state a few years before.

Beginning in the early 1990s, with the takeoff of Windows-based computing and the Internet, employment in the IT industry surged. Employment in software and related services grew by one million between 1993 and 2000, before dropping by 166,000 between 2000 and 2002. The story has been much the same across other IT sectors: stupendous growth throughout the 1990s, then a pullback in employment of 10 to 20 percent during the recession. In the IT industry as a whole, employment levels even after the recession were still no lower than in 1998. During the past decade, annual employment in the industry has still grown at a rate twice as fast as employment in private industry in general.(emphasis added)

It's really not as bad as one might think

The recent elections in India might have an impact

[mc6809e]

Over the past 10+ years or so, India has seen great economic growth. Many economists attribute this to the adoption of a more capitalist/free market system. Recent elections threaten to turn back these reforms as many rural people feel they have been left out of the boom. Such a backlash might make doing business in India more difficult. In fact, shortly after the elections, the Indian stock market dropped about 4%.

I'd like to hear the opinion of Indians on these elections and their impact.

Re:creativity and innovation

[Cromac]

Alot of K-12 teachers still get paid essentially crap wages.

That's teachers union propoganda. The average teacher in the US makes nearly $42,000 / year. Factoring in an extra 35 days of work that the rest of us work every year brings the average teacher salary to $52,541.

http://www.cnn.com/2003/EDUCATION/07/04/teacher.sa laries.ap/