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U.S. IT jobs Down 400K Since 2001
Cryofan writes "A research study shows that American information technology industry 'lost 403,300 jobs between March 2001, when the recession began, and April 2004.' Over half of those jobs - 206,300 - were lost after the recession was declared over in November 2001. In all, the job market for high-tech workers shrank by 18.8 percent, to 1,743,500, between March 2001 and April 2004. And the bloodletting continues -- as
reported here on Slashdot earlier this year, the number of employed Software Engineers fell by 15% from April to July of 2004 (from 856,000 to 725,000)."
You know, I was really starting to buy into some of the arguments about how sourcing some of these jobs overseas was actually a good idea if you looked at it just so....... Well, I had no idea that the scope of the loss was this big and that the overall job market for such workers had shrunk. How can it shrink? I think something stinks here....
Cheers,
Erick
http://www.busyweather.com/
Before anyone cries out "foreigners are stealing our jobs", read this.
They are doing to us IT workers what they did to advanced, capital-intensive manufacturing jobs in America (as opposed to "assembly jobs"): they spirited it away to Asia. And we could have stopped it with trade barriers. But they sold us on neoliberal trade policies with $24 worth of trinkets.
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Read here:
>>>>>>>>
commentator Eamonn Fingleton speaks bluntly about what he sees as the frittering away of the United States' manufacturing base and what he regards as the consequent stagnation of the American standard of living. For those who believe in the superiority of the current U.S. postindustrial strategy, a reading of the OECD Economic Yearbook makes for a distinctly chastening study. As Fingleton puts it: "The United States trails no fewer than eight other nations, all of which devote a larger share of their labor force to manufacturing."
Fingleton, who distinguishes between high-end and low-end jobs, insists that the former, advanced manufacturing, must be reconstituted if the United States wants to remain a superpower. And what are these eroded industries? Semiconductor materials, ceramic packaging for semiconductors, charge-coupled devices (CCD), industrial robotics, numerically controlled machine tools, laser diodes and carbon fibers, to name only a few.
Where did the manufacturing of these items go? In most cases, Japan now dominates the more advanced areas of these industries, says Fingleton, who lives in Tokyo. Moreover, he argues, by dint of superior know-how and large capital investments Japan now enjoys a global lock on key manufacturing processes.
Fingleton recalls an America where men and women went to work and made the nation great, the old-fashioned way, by producing products people wanted and needed. And he juxtaposes the loss of advanced manufacturing jobs in this country with what he regards as the overvalued dollar, America's compulsion to borrow huge sums of money to fund its deficits and an illusionary U.S. prosperity based on unsustainable debt. For now Japan and China, both running huge trade surpluses, pay the United States' bills, he says. Where does this leave the American worker? He puts the answer simply: Out of work!
It is not true that Japan is in dire economic straits, Fingleton maintains. In a recent article in the London journal Prospect entitled "Japan's Fake Funk," he writes: "The Western consensus is that Japan is a basket case: It is not. That is a misreading by the West."
Meanwhile, he says, ill-conceived U.S. policies have failed to protect home-based American industries, leading to the transference of the most advanced technologies known to mankind. Fingleton says flatly that Japan has built up its industrial base at the expense of the United States, and that China now is chomping at the bit to do the same.
Eamonn Fingleton: I mean those engaged in advanced manufacturing. Specifically, industries that are both highly capital intensive and highly know-how intensive. They typically are many orders of magnitude more capital-intensive and know-how intensive than the most advanced of "New Economy" services, such as computer software developed in the last three decades.
Although Japan is known in the West for its leadership in certain consumer products such as cars and television sets, its area of greatest leadership is in much more advanced industries that largely are invisible to the consumer. Specifically, Japan leads almost right across the board in the sort of advanced materials, high-tech components and production machinery that are driving the electronic revolution. Some products may be assembled in the United States, but their key manufacture - the manufacture of the advanced components and materials - is done in Japan.
much more here: http://www.pushhamburger.com/edge.htmEconomic
eat shiat and bark at the moon
This process actually accelerated under CLinton. Clinton was a better Republican than Eisenhower, or maybe even Nixon.
eat shiat and bark at the moon
Additionally, there were so many idiots in technology by 2000. Sysadmins that didn't know the dif between Cat3 from Cat5, programmers that didn't know what a for-loop were getting 100k Java jobs, etc, etc, etc. I don't know if there were 400k, but I do think that a lot of people lost jobs that didn't deserve to have them. Also, I have had a lot of very smart friends out of work that did.
Even in 2000 and 2001 there were still tech areas hiring. I really wonder how many of those 400k were jobs that should never have existed in the first place?
Just some random thoughts on the subject.
Great ideas often receive violent opposition from mediocre minds. - Albert Einstein
I've seen estimates much higher.
Read some of Paul Craig Roberts columns on http://www.vdare.com/roberts/all_columns.htm. I agree with his assertion that we're exporting jobs that provide ladders of upward mobility and importing poor people. He makes the case that this is not free trade but global labor arbitrage.
Wansu, th' chinese sailor
One of the expectations of outsourcing programming jobs to lower wage countries is that the number of higher paying, project management jobs will increase. Anyone out there who made the leap from programming to project management (or know someone who has)? If so, how did you go about it?
And is there a greater demand now for project management jobs?
On a similar note, it seems to me that the number of consulting and professional services jobs have increased as of late. However, many of these jobs do not pay salaries comparable to programming jobs during the late 90's. I could be wrong about that though.
If anything, new college students should be told how many people in the 90's picked computer science as a major because some magazine which ranked salaries said CS was #1 in pay and projected growth. Better to study something which is interesting than to go for the money. I knew a guy in college who was an english student. Everyone asked him, what are you going to do with an english degree. He shruged his shoulders, and said "dunno, but i like reading". After college, he got a masters, then found a teaching job. He makes more than some of the CS people I knew, and he gets the summer off. The kicker is he is doing what he likes. And he was supposed to be the poor one.
Come and say hi. http://forum.penpals.com/index.php
Both political parties claim that free markets require the free exchange of goods and services (which includes labor) between the USA and other members of the World Trade Organization (WTO) and fusing the American market with the Chinese/Indian/Mexican market maintains the free market in the USA. Unfortunately, the politicians are just playing a verbal game with economics.
Allow me to explain. The USA, in isolation, is a relatively free market -- with relatively little government intervention (compare to, say, China). So is Japan, Canada, and the rest of the West. However, Mexico, China, and India are not free markets. Excessive government intervention has damaged the markets in those economies, and they cannot provide jobs for millions of underemployed persons.
When the USA interacts with, say, China, we have the interaction of a free market and a non-free market. The by-product (i.e. millions of underemployed Chinese) of non-market forces now affects the market dynamics in the USA. The underemployed Chinese are a continuing stream of cheap slave labor; jobs are then transferred from the USA to China.
The USA is no longer a free market because non-market forces (in this case, Chinese government intervention) is altering the dynamics of the labor market in the USA. The verbal game that politicians play is to simply define the USA to be a "free market", ignoring the fact that the Chinese government is now grossly affecting the labor market of the USA.
Similar comments apply to both India and Mexico. Similar comments apply to H-1B workers and illegal aliens from Mexico: the American government has, in effect, actively used H-1B workers and illegal aliens to intervene in the labor markets in both high tech and low tech. Illegal aliens have destroyed the upward pressure on wages in the market for unskilled labor. H-1B have hurt salaries for engineers. Shortages are a normal part of any labor market, and they are an upward force on salaries/wages and working conditions. When the government actively works to wipe out such shortages, the government is damaging market forces.
If you hate what is happening to our country, the USA, then please write the following on the November ballot.
president: Bill O'Reilly
vice-president: Tammy Bruce
and the recent job gains are in sectors such as burger flipping.
That doesn't sound so bad if you count burger-flipping as a manufacturing job...
This is only looking at a segment of the IT industry -- software developers. Sure, it sucks if you're one of them and out of a job (been there, etc).
On the other hand, the demand for sys admins, security specialists, DBAs, etc seems to be increasing. Pay rates vary all over the board depending on experience and particular skills (and how cheap the company is), but this is nothing new.
Locally I've seen a big turn up in demand starting about six to nine months ago. And that's not counting the huge demand that exists for anyone with a computer background that also has (or had and can renew) a security clearance. (And you know those jobs won't be outsourced.)
-- Alastair
the number of employed Software Engineers fell by 15% from April to July of 2004 (from 856,000 to 725,000)."
Yet nearly every business uses computers. The entire economy is practically based on computers, yet there are fewer than 800,000 software engineers? Glad to see all that time (and overtime, and weekends, and vacations) spent learning as much as possible about technology was completely wasted.
Nope, no free market here either.
Business isn't willing to pay for products, innovation and careers, so we get brands, mortgage commercials and layoffs.
...dropping all that money on dot bombs missed a pretty good steady monthly income when they FAILED to run the last mile of fiber to all the places in the US that *don't* have it. Look around outside of urbania-see all them satellite dishes? the ones ontop of almost every home of any size, from the smallest single wide to the largerst multi story mansions? Thats 50$ a month, multiplied by millions of homes, that went to the satellite companies just for television. Now imagine if they had run the fiber instead, they would be able to offer more channels, telephony service, and internet/data and video on demand.
How much is that potentially worth? Getting a steady check from millions of places a month for say 100$ for Tv/phone/net service is chump change?
Naw, the carriers are dumb for going for the quick cheap buck for a few years, and ignoring the tried and true long term buck that comes from long term business thinking that hasn't been adled by massive cocaine and booze usage, which is part of the dot bomb phenomenon that no one wants to remember I guess. Too many business decisions built on chemical hysteria and delusions of grandeur and get rich quick schemisms combined with stock market casino tulip mania, instead of just regular old-fashioned sober boring work.
Having spent the last year working as a project manager for a graphic design firm, coming from a development background, I think I now understand why: you must be task oriented, not system oriented, and you must have no aversion to telling someone (not something) else to do something, rather than doing it yourself, and finally, keeping schedules and budgets is not immersive work, it's work that requires lots of shallow and responsive handling.
Programmers are inherently system oriented. When there's a problem to fix, they want to build something that solves it, or enables someone else to solve it. The old saw about the programmer who will spend hours to write a script that could do something (perhaps tedious) that he could have done in 30 minutes is what's at work here.
Most of the programmers I know also have no problem telling a machine to do something -- or even talking about how an organization should run. But when it comes down to telling someone what they should be doing and when it needs to be done by -- that's a whole different thing.
Most programmers I know like immersive tasks... something you can sit down, focus on, mull over, work deeply in, and then deliver. PM is about turning lots of shallow details fast. There's a lot more task switching (which is why if you try to do some of the work yourself, you're doomed to failure, because immersive tasks and having a large volume of shallow details to take care of don't mix at all).
These are problems I share, and it didn't take me long to realize what they were, but it took me months to get over them (and also, to get the organization to stop thinking of me as a person they could *also* give web dev work to as well). I've gotten much better, but it was a hard haul the first six months, and sometimes I'd rather be back making cool things rather than dealing with this.
But: the good thing is that most programmers are skilled at breaking a problem down into smaller, more easily solvable problems. Their systems thinking can be a great strength if the project allows enough slack to let them set the system. They're introspective enough they can self-improve. And if they've got deft enough social skills to get people to do what they're supposed to, they can become quite succesful.
Tweet, tweet.
You may, but I don't. I know the company I did support for for over seven years has outsourced almost all support. From what I can tell, most of the techs laid off still haven't found work in over 18 months. Back before the mania for oursourcing, we couldn't hire techs fast enough to keep up with demand, so at least some of the dot-bomb refugees ended up with us for a while.
Good, inexpensive web hosting
Those among the Hijack-All Rich and the Sell-Out policy makers are seeding or acceding to capitalism, but ceding our (or their own nations') security and stability (by imperialistically taking markets, seeding insatiable materialism, and then absconding when the shit hits the fan.
Long Version, as applies to the US in my jaded view (yeh, I was born and raised here, served for here, and paid taxes here, so I can kvetch as ruthlessly and non-physically as I choose):
Rant mode on:
Look, **outsourcing** in and of itself is not a bad thing. While outsourcing (where corporate 'meriku is solely or primarily interested in the bottom line and the employee can be expensive, and the company SENDS the jobs away) it is not exactly the same as migrant/seasonal workers coming here to pick vegetables and fruits in hot-assed weather (where most 'merikuns would not dare go), outsourcing has been going on for decades.
But, the heinous part about outsourcing of the 90's is the RATE or INTENSITY of it. More and more local or regional competitors are driving down profits, and the almighty-dollar-lovin' boards of directors demand response, hence increased outsourcing.
But, that is GOOD, since it does what I call "raising the boats with the waterline" so the other nations don't get swamped and sink. This is a problem we're creating and driving and going to pay for. Materialism has its price.
As degrees become less influential, and as jobs increasingly become automated or go overseas, the inevitable outcome is there will be less work for shitloads of people --educated or not.
This "free enterprise" system could (technically), might (via recklessness), and probably (for moral/karma rectification reasons) should come screeching to a halt, and I predict the government will have to -- and better goddam get on the ball with this -- start paying people just to stay out of trouble, printing money to keep souls out of malaise, low-wage doldrums, and downright incensed. Materialism can only go so far, and when the consumers run out of money, the rich will be the first in line to cash out of their bank before OTHER RICHER person gets there to do the same.
I don't at ALL blame India or Filipinos or Taiwanese. It's the "sell granny for a buck if we have to" types who program the markets to hell and then abscond when the shit hits the fan. We need to put the brakes on the persistent "irrational exuberance" that is causing insane increases in property values, nearly inexplicable increases in stress and stress-related diseases and injuries, and just FIX our tottering, ambling system.
So, if politicians don't want their asses hung, strung and slung (I wouldn't participate, but I wouldn't rescue most of them either, with the way things keep going when they sell their souls for a buck), they'd better start redrafting the next Great Experiment:
-- Resuscitating America After the Materialism Dream Implodes.
So, it won't matter if it's pink or plastic food stamps or benefits currency, or if it's green. I figure I don't care if somebody is counterfeiting, since the government is the largest counterfieter a nation can have. THink about it: BILLIONS of US dollars get printed and shipped overseas to influence others and endear them to 'merikun power, stability, and more. But, corrupt dictators, monarchies, shahs, premiers, emperors, and more (no better, not much worse than the cadge/cabals we have had and STILL have in office right now), and the money ends up sequestered in some goddam vault in case a dictator needs to make a quick, rich getaway after 'merika or some other nations' intelligence forces depose, or attempt to decapitate, a now-unpopular "leader".
So, if we can allow this system of ours to print, ship away, and lose track of uncirculated cold, hard cash that WE could be spending, but the program it for others, then when it is NOT in circulation, it is either ignored, or it's replaced with yet more cash. That being so, what the HELL is wrong with the government
Previously: "Linux... Toward the Sunrise..." Now: "Linux... Toward the-- No, now, part of Every Sunrise"
Huh? How exactly is India or Mexico not a "free market"?
1. Gov subsidize fields of expertise they feel will give them an economic and/or military advantage.
2. They purposely undervalue their currency because exports are more important to the gov than cheaper local consumer goods.
Table-ized A.I.
That's what happens when everybody decides to go into a field to make big bucks. You have an oversupply of labor. And when that labor won't take lower pay because the market value is lower, you get unemployment. Luckily, I ignored the advice and didn't go that route.
Likewise, it would take courage to face up to America's worsening financial situation.
Sayeth the governor of California:
"There is another way you can tell you're a Republican. You have faith in free enterprise, faith in the resourcefulness of the American people...and faith in the U.S. economy. To those critics who are so pessimistic about our economy, I say: Don't be economic girlie men!"
This year, both parties have shown a real genius for propaganda. If you dare to face up to the realities of the U.S. financial system...you are an "economic girlie man." Real men just take it as an article of faith that the "resourcefulness of the American people" will somehow override the laws of economics...
Except for a few cranks and Don Quixotes such as Pete Peterson, Ron Paul and Laurence Kotlikoff, no one in Congress, academia, the administration, the Republican or Democratic parties, nor in the Federal Reserve has the courage to face up to any of America's looming debacles.
Americans get poorer by $2 billion per day. Who even mentions it?
The American government has run up $44 trillion worth of obligations - with no way to pay for them. Who cares?
Americans now absorb as much as 80% of the entire world's savings - not to build a profit-making economy, but merely to maintain current levels of consumption against a backdrop of slipping real incomes. Who warns them?
American workers now face stiff competition from 3 billion foreigners who will work harder, longer and for a fraction of the pay. Unless he tightens his belt, saves furiously, and learns to produce higher quality goods and services...the average American is going to lose ground in the years ahead. Who has the guts to tell him?
U.S. householders owe more money to more people than ever before in history. A financial collapse will not just affect rich speculators...instead, like the hyperinflation in Germany in the early '20s, it will reach down to the bedrock of American householders...and upset it badly.
Germany was so unsettled by the financial calamities of the '20s it welcomed a whole new team of scoundrels. Italy welcomed Mussolini largely because the nation was bankrupt. The Argentine generals launched the Falklands war in order to divert the public from its financial catastrophes.
And now, the "Nation of Courage" itself...lumbers toward its own wussy ruin...
"I don't see how anyone with an IQ over 70 can be anything but utterly pessimistic about the long-term outlook for the U.S. economy..." writes Marty Whitman of Third Avenue Funds. "Everybody's - and I mean everybody's - emphasis is on the short-term outlook. Nobody, but nobody is focused on solving real structural problems, organic structural problems that exist."
No. That would take courage, the one thing the nation most needs and most hasn't got.
Regards,
Bill Bonner
The Daily Reckoning
Time to start our own businesses, form co-ops, and stick it to the outsourcing bastards age?
Seriously, I've been toying with the idea of a nationwide tech co-operative to provide consulting services, provide tech services, etc... A large enough co-op with the right people joining in and spearheading it, could seriously compete. No corporate bullshitters or middle managers skimming off the top. And we could outsource things ourselves when we can't beat an outsourcing company.
While I can envision it, the idea is bigger than me. I just wish I knew who to talk to about this. I have 5 grand of my own money I'll put up to get started and I'm willing to bet, provided a real plan to make money exists, I could find 100s if not 1000s of others with their own money(maybe not as much as I have) to put up. It's either we go this route, or go unions, or else we're all going to continue to get nailed to the door.
Think for yourself, destroy your television.
This is not insightful its prejudiced, or perhaps a poor joke modded distastefully.
I am of half Indian heritage and was born in Boulder (Colorado, USA). I chose to study computer science - graduated at two years ago - an am gainfully employed here in the USA for an upper-middle-ish salary that pays my bills. While I am certainly not suggesting that jobs are prevailent today - they are available.
I was hired because I was a good student, because I had decent (in a relative sense!) networking skills and because I was perserverant.
India has the best computer science program in the world (IIT) - not according to me, but rather 60 minutes. If we are going to rally around a point perhaps the outsourcing of telephone related jobs (telemarketing, support, etc) - a role which is rather impaired by an accent - would be a more appropriate one.
How do I keep track of people who are fingering
Those figures certainly agree with what I've experienced. In April, I was laid off from my decade-long software engineering job in the North SF Bay area. I quickly noticed that every week, *hundreds* of other local guys were being laid off also. Some from big places like HP, Agilent, and Autodesk. Some from little shops like the place that I was at.
From talking to other people in my situation, it seemed that the rule of thumb was that you should expect to search 1 month for every $10K that you expect to earn. Based on that, plus the nasty cost of living in northern California, I beat a hasty retreat from the area. Thankfully, I'm gainfully employed elsewhere now.
Slashdot: come for the pedantry, stay for the condescension.
My company is hiring developers. I interviewed a few of them this week, and none of them met the bar for a medium level position. Coworkers and I would give them some simple coding problems, stuff like merge two arrays, reverse a linked list, reverse a string in place, and none of them gave a satisfactory answer. And some of these questions have been published in several books - do these guys not show up prepared? Going beyond coding, it was clear none of them really understood the software business despite claims of 5 to 15 years experience.
I don't doubt there are some good people out of work for too long, but even with all the outsourcing going on, there are companies hiring as there will always be software development done in the USA. All these custom applications by small firms will forever demand local employment, just as one example - Billy Bob isn't going to want to deal with a bunch of Indian devs across the world for his inventory tracking system, he's going to stay local.
As others have stated, first ask yourself if you really are a good developer, and if you default to "I have X years experience," rather than enumerating your accomplishments, the answer may very well be no. If yes, you'll find something soon enough if you use some saavy in your search. Just keep an open mind and be prepared to make some adjustments, including but not limited to moving.
After years of "huge economic rises" and years of "it's a new economy" is anyone surprised? The so called tech boom created thousands of new tech jobs, many of them software engineers, for stupid start up companies who thought they could ignore how the economy really works.
So, four years after the dust settles we're still going to see the backlash of what happens when you hire too many non-qualified people and too many people looking for the quick gold rush buck. Of course there are less jobs in this area, because perhaps we didn't need them anymore once the "new economy" evaoporated.
Hint: There never was a new economy, it was a farse.
I'm somewhat stumped by people blaming Bush for this. The economy didn't shrivel because he became president, it was already going down before then, tech companies IPO'ing without a major project, or a product that in todays market is just pathetic will cause stuff like that. Tons of money tossed into "new avenue markets" by big venture capitalist firms instead of going into current growing markets that have a proven track record.
It's not Bush, heck it wasn't Clinton, the jobs are gone, they even deserve to be gone. Now everyone just needs to find out why everyone else is so dang surprised.
Outsourcing has definately put a dent in the US job market, and while this: http://www.criticalconcern.com/satire-president-ou tsourced.htm Clearly Satirical Article is but humourous and entertaining, I thought it would be a refreshing laugh for those slashdot readers suffering from this sad state of affairs.
This isn't limited to IT professionals, its part of the real world of engineering.
When I graduated in 2000 (peak of the tech bubble), anybody with a CS or EE was picked right up. Myself and some friends of mine weren't CS or EE, and struggled to get jobs. I was lucky I got a good job offer before graduation; but one ChemE friend became a database administrator. Another was a MatSci major and had to accept a contractor position doing material testing until this year, and another was an aerospace engineer who had to get a job doing some mechanical simulations.
The IT industry has come back down to earth, and qualified people might not be able to get a job in IT, just as qualified people in other engineering professions can't always get their preferred job.
D6 63 0D 70 89 81 BB 8E 7B 7C 5F 5D 54 EA AB 73
new tech = new jobs
just remember that new tech != more jobs. Many companies would rather patent all the new technology. And keep it stocked away and unused so they can still have a job to do.
Vote for new mod!!! Score:-2,Imbecile
Well, till enought people in the USA have their wages reduced so much that they vote in people to fix the problem.
That is something the medieval history major that runs HP and others like her forget to take in account.
Kind of like the only people who are supporting all the illegal immigration are those that live in gated communities and/or have their own compounds and private security.
I also suggest you look up and see who the insurer of last resort is for all these overseas factories. HINT. it is the US Taxpayer.
Before any one starts trolling about how great Bush is here is a pre-emptive rebuttal. The economy wen't down on Bush's watch. Terrorists struck on Bush's watch. Overtime got cut on Bush's watch. Outsourcing increased due to tax incentives on Bush's watch. Both the House and Senate are Republican controlled. Now you can argue its not his fault. Wrong. By being the commander and chief one has a exacting duty to this country and responsibility to do every thing possible to maintain balance, peace and prosperity.
"Yes, but I've heard that the outsourcing is getting to be a less desirable thing, at least to countries like India and China".
Dream on, alas. None of the top-tier VC firms in the valley will talk to you these days unless you've at least some some plans in place for outsourcing. And VC's, sad to say, define how things are run.
Yeah, they are mostly clueless PHBs who think they are God's gift to humanity (and were also the people who dumped 600 million each into two dog-food companies when the web was new). But they do set the trend, and the trend isn't changing there, alas.
You're missing a big piece of the picture here. Putting aside the fact that America isn't a free market and hasn't been for quite some time, let's pretend for a moment that the entire world - every single country - is happily following Adam Smith's theory as closely as possible.
What happens? The overall wealth of the entire world rises, probably markedly. The system as a whole benefits from free market economics. Let me repeat that: the system AS A WHOLE benefits from free market economics.
This DOES NOT MEAN that EVERY NATION benefits from this situation. All free market economics guarrantees is that the world, taken as a whole, will be wealthier than it was before. Some areas will see their wealth increase by vast amounts; others by lesser amounts; and some areas will actually see their wealth DECLINE. But when you add them all up, the world - as a whole - will be wealthier.
The free market doesn't distribute wealth fairly nor equally, nor should it. That's what socialism - the antithesis of the free market - tries to do. It could very well be that even if every nation in the world were as close to the free market as possible, that the U.S. could end up being one of the losers while many other nations wind up being the big winners.
The free market doesn't guarrantee an increase in wealth for every part of the system, just for the system overall. Smith himself mentioned this but saw it as a good thing, standing apart from national interests to give a (mostly) objective rendering of his theory.
As an American I'm concerned with the welfare of myself and my fellow citizens first and foremost, and this only makes sense. If I were more concerned about Nigeria, it would behoove me to move to Nigeria and become a citizen of that country, since I'm putting Nigerian interests before that of any other country. But seeing as how I'm an American and I don't have any hankering at all to be a Nigerian, my primary focus is on increasing the wealth of AMERICA. It would be incredibly stupid of me to sacrifice my own rational self-interest - along with that of my countrymen, my relatives, my friends, and my children - to argue for free-market economics in a situation where America stands to lose and others stand to gain. Deliberately depriving yourself, your friends, your family, and your chilren of opportunities, shipping them overseas for others to take advantage of, isn't 'altruism'; it's foolishness bordering on the criminal (or the insane).
Oddly enough, both the Democrats and the Republicans argue that this is a good thing and that we do all this in accordance with the 'free market' (again, despite the fact that America isn't much of a free market). That selling out American workers is fine and dandy because it upholds the mantra 'free market', and that in some magical fashion all the jobs lost will eventually be made up through the invention of new technologies. In the interim between the old economy and the imaginary new one which has yet to come, we lose more than 2 million jobs, 1.1 million of which are replaced by jobs which pay nearly $9,000 less than the ones which were lost. Unemployment is still higher than it's been since the recession year of 1983, but so many workers have been off the unemployment rolls for so long the government no longer counts them - and therefore, in some bizarre bureaucratic fashion, they're no longer unemployed.
(How all of this innovation is supposed to occur under the new IP laws is beyond me, but that's a discussion for the next RIAA/MPAA/Disney news item.)
As the parent poster mentioned, the situation becomes even worse when you embark on free market economics with nations that themselves don't practice anything like the free market. Massive government intervention along with vastly lower standards of living almost assures movement of jobs from the free market (or pseudo-free market) nations to the non-free market nations. Exactly what we're seeing right now, actually.
The only way to stem the tide is
My god carries a hammer. Your god died nailed to a tree. Any questions?
The tech industry crash might not have been caused by Clinton, but it started on his watch.
I'll agree with you on this point. But there are smart things you can do, as president, to minimize the impact of such a crash, and then there are dumb things you can do that will only exacerbate the situation.
I think a lot of the difference is in work-ethic.
Like it or not, that work ethic has made us the most powerful economy in the history of the world. So no matter what you might think, we're obviously doing SOMETHING right, and more right than anyone else.
Max
My god carries a hammer. Your god died nailed to a tree. Any questions?
I had just started university in 1998 when it was really getting in full swing. I started picking up computer support certs not to dropout and go get a .com job, but just because it was easy to do and I'd figure it would help me in the future with jobs. I was correct in this, as many students apply for student tech support jobs, not many have any certs. Even simply ones like the A+ and Network+, which is what I had, were enough to give me the edge.
Well having completed basically all that CompTIA offered at the time, I figured I'd ask the cert company where I ought to look next. I was thinking MCSE, since it was the grand daddy tech support cert at the time, ro so it seemed.
They sat me down with a rep and we talked shop. First thing he wanted to know was what I did, other than school, which at the time was act as the webmaster for the school paper. This was great, he said, because the web was The Holy Grail, and all you needed to be rich. He recommended a couple design and administration certificits (and their training for them, of course). Any time I asked about things liek the MCSE he told me not ot worry about that, maybe after, the web was where money was.
Well I decided not. I didn't really like webdesign enough to make it a carreer, and my roomate was a bussiness major who knew enough about the market to know this shit wasn't going to last. The cert center, meanwhile, was pumping out people left and right with a couple moths training and some peices of paper who were getting quite lucrative jobs as web designers/adminstrators.
So where are we today? Well I don't know any of those any more. All the designers I know are either good graphics/layout people, or good programming/backend people, neither of which I was. Administration is done by competent (usually) tech people, and I'm happily working doing systems and network support.
It seems this crap was hardly unique. In all areas, but the web espically, people were being pused out the door with meaningless certs to find great jobs. Well one knows that just can't last. A peice of paper doesn't mean you do your job well and if I had a nickel for evey "IT" person I've met with a cert but not the skills/knowledge that cert allegedly implies, I'd have a lot of nickels.
I'm sure outsourcing isn't helping the job situation any, but I hardly think it's the cause or major factor.
CA isn't a swing state. It doesn't matter what Bust does or what Kerry promises, the vote for CA is already decided. Why should either side waste effort helping a state that will not have its vote influenced by that help? They spend their time where it might have effect in changing voters minds.
Guess what, one of my uncle's lives under the poverty line according to government statistics.
Owns a half million dollar home, a few cars, a RV and a pair of nice bikes. His income is practically nothing but he has incredible capital resources.
FWIW, to live in "poverty" in the US is to live better than most of the world. How many people in poverty in the world do you know have televisions, cars, cell-phones, 700+ square feet of living space, refrigerators, and many other items?
Poverty is all relative. In the US the large concentrations of wealth bring better health care to the poor as well. While there are a large number of uninsured people in this country no one is prevented from getting medical care, and a lot of those who cannot pay do not have to pay.
I look at it this way, if you cannot support yourself on 40 hours a week pay then you should try to find a program to teach you a trade so that you can. If you can't do that then get two jobs or find ways to cut your costs. There is no excuse for not being able to support oneself on a full time job. Yeah, if your minimum wage its a bitch but you have to expect to cut out lots of extras and then share the burden with a few others (ie roommates). If that is not incentive to improve then nothing is.
Those foreigners can only do a few things with their dollars. They can spend them on American exports, they can buy American owned assets (such as American owned companies or land) and they can lend the money to America. If they do more of the second two than the first (so that the value of US exports is less than the value of US imports) then the result is a trade deficit.
This is exactly what HAS been happening to the US. My guess is that almost all of the difference (the surplus in the capital account) has been lent to the US - and much of that to the government to fund it's growing national debt. Some asian countries have large dollar foreign exchange reserves, too, which is not so very different from lending.
This can't go on forever; there's a limit to how much foreigners want to lend to the US. The dollar will fall and outsourcing will stop being so attractive.
Unfortunately the increasing borrowing by the US government will push US interest rates up in order to attract more money in from abroad and away from other domestic investments (which means you can expect to see a fall in investment by US companies). That'll help keep the dollar up - but a lot of people still seem to be expecting the dollar to fall quite a lot over the next few years.
This probably isn't going to be too good for the US economy. A lot of people will whine when they can't buy 20 dollar DVD players any more and when higher interest rates burst the (admittedly small by international standards) US housing bubble - but at least some jobs will go back to the US.
That may be true, but there's also a much simpler explanation: saying that someone working a 70 hour week will be twice as productive as someone working a 35 hour week is simply wrong. In fact, as good management has long known, most people's performance degrades fairly dramatically not much beyond those 35 hours; you can do it for a short period in a crunch, but it's not sustainable. Moreover, the diminishing returns start to become negative after a while: someone who works 70 hour weeks regularly is likely to make so many mistakes that they become counterproductive, actually eating into other people's time to fix the problems they create.
Can anybody remember the study (from Switzerland, I think) where a company dropped its work hours to 9-3 Monday-Friday and insisted its employees did not work significant overtime? Their staff were more focussed because they had limited time to get the work done, and because of the earlier finish they weren't always worrying about collecting kids from school, getting to the shops/doctor/dentist/post office, etc. Their productivity rocketed. I saw several reports about this, around the time of the tech boom when many companies were pushing for ever longer work hours, but I can't find a citation now...
If you disagree, post your argument. (-1, Overrated) isn't your personal censorship tool for views you don't like.
They don't hire as many low-income people as highly-competitive, socially-focussed industries, and they've got a proven track record of padding their bills big-time. The whole military-industrial complex is overhead for a society - the main focus of that industry is _not_ to improve a society's health. It might be _necessary_ overhead to ensure a society's survival, but if it gets bigger than you need to protect your society, then it is sucking essential resources which could be better applied to a society's health & growth.
I'll agree with the hiring part, and I'd love to see the improved infrastructure you spoke of, but as a 22 yr vet., defense contracting, cubicle sitting engineer, I'll disagree about the "proven track record". Sure there are abuses (as with every industry, including the "socially-focussed" ones), but bill padding doesn't really happen...nobody wants to go to jail. Like any good business, we look for ways to maximize profit, win new contracts, etc. I'd also like to point out to you that without us socially-unfocussed defense contractors, you'd likely be unable to have made your post in the first place, but then you probably weren't around for the cold-war. I can give you plenty of examples of abuses in your "socially-focussed" areas...
Why do I need to donate supplies for my childs classroom (they never get enough), while the three(!) secretarys in the office sit at hugh solid oak desks (have you checked the price on one of those lately?)?
How do you suppose that a married couple of county patrol car cops (they live not far from me), were able to afford a $950k home?...ok, maybe they had rich parents, but I've seen a trend of this in northern VA.
Could it be that the local bureaucracies are just as bad/worse/more corrupt than the federal?
Just another day in Paradise
The Iraq war didn't make a difference to the economy?!
bring it on! --- JFK
When your country is having 1 billion citizen and you need to enter the modern age in order to keep the economy moving, one day or another, you don't have much choice to star at these much manual, slow, useless tasks. And I think the fact you expericenced this bureaucracy in US and Canada, as you said, just mean you don't really know what I am talking about. It has nothing to do with Western progress, as you call it with a bit of disdain.
Achille Talon
Hop!
The late 90's tech boom served to employ anybody and everybody that had even looked at a computer (or knew how to spell 'computer'). This was unnatural. The money pumped into the tech market in the late 90s attracted unqualified workers motivated by greed more than anything else.
Think about how many people you looked to in the late 90s, early 2000's and thought "how have you managed to stay employed?!".
Part of the contracting phase of the business cycle involves the shake-out of the inefficient firms from the market. Those are the firms that waited for the early-adopters to get the results of their litmus test of the market, and upon seeing positive results, entered the market and tried to capitalize on their status as late early-adopters. When their particular market turns south, the early-adopters of technologies remain (mostly because they really believe in their technology) while the late early-adopters are shaken out (by the lack of demand for product) and move on to another field. This is normal!
I view the decrease of tech jobs in a positive light. I know construction workers, electricians, and even day care specialists that went into the computer industry in the last 7 or so years. They made some cash, didn't really bring much value (because they lacked expertise), and now that the market is harder, they're going back to their old jobs. This is good! What you want is a computer industry with highly skilled workers. You don't want a computer industry where every person in the US is a candidate.
Yes, jobs have decreased 18.8% since 2001. But if the job count was 2000% higher than what the market could support, 18.8% doesn't seem so large anymore.
On a side note - look what happened to NASA in the past 40 years. NASA used to be a place where only the best-of-the-best were employed (back in the 60s). Very few people could go work for NASA, and terms like "rocket science" were used as a form of respect. Nowadays, NASA is a cross-section of the US population, unmotivated, bloated, and over-weight. NASA is stupid these days, and can be looked at as a laughing stock. Why? Because NASA opened their doors to everyone (not just the elite) and the influx of stupidity forever dumbened the culture. Now we have shuttles that fall out of the sky, satellites that burn up on entry into orbit due to metric to english conversion, and 3 years worth of science "wobbling" and "tumbling" it's way back to Utah.
Do you want the computer industry to become what NASA has become?
-c
Do it for da shorties
Evidence as such:
I heard on NPR marketplace a while back that an online mortgage company gave clients an option: Have it processed in 3 days by Indian Outsourcing, or 5 days domestic (in US). 95% of people chose the outsourced solution, despite no extra out-of-pocket expendatures for either one.
Bottom line: Will complain about outsourcing, how unAmerican it is, etc.. But when you actually ask them to vote with their wallets, they are no better than corporations!
case in point was someone who called me recently after working for 20 years at the same company as a coder. he's not some idiot who didn't know his stuff. but surprise, surprise, big company x has decided to close down the office and outsource everything. the sarcastic amongst you will claim he's an idiot for statying with a company for 20 years, but to me these are the kind of victims that you all are not taking into account.
to casually suggest that he just move after being in the same city and raising a family in the same place for 20 years also suggests your own shallow view of the world.
again, get over your view of only unqualified programmers or "cab drivers" (wow, what a generalization) are suffering. i hope true karma bites some of you right in the arse.