Outsourcing As A Source Of U.S. Jobs

An anonymous reader writes "The Economic Times, India's leading financial newspaper, reports that Diana Farrell, Director, McKinsey Global Institute during her speech at Nasscom 2004 said that Bureau of Labour Statistics is predicting a job gain of 22m in the US by 2010, against a job loss of 2m, due to offshoring. You can read the full article here."

Yep...

[Black Parrot]

If 2 million people each take on 11 "want fries with that?" jobs to maintain the income they lost when their professional jobs got offshored, everything will work out even.

Re:so..

[Skyshadow]

we lose 2 million engineering jobs, and gain 22 million pizza delivery jobs. Sounds like a great trade-off to me!

When all the tech jobs finally dry up and the only thing the US does better than the rest of the world is high-speed pizza delivery, I'll be first in line to work for Uncle Enzo. Being the Deliverator is actually sort of a long-standing ambition of mine...

The Deliverator used to make software. Still does, sometimes. But if life were a mellow elementary school run by well-meaning education PhD's, the Deliverator's report card would say: "Skyshadow is so bright and creative but needs to work harder on his cooperation skills...

The Deliverator is a Type A driver with rabies. He is zeroing in on his home base, CosaNostra Pizza #3569, cranking up the left lane of CSV-5 at a hundred and twenty kilometers. His car is a black lozenge, just a dark place that reflects the tunnel of franchise signs -- the loglo. A row of orange lights burbles and churns across the front, where the grille would be if this were an air-breathing car. The orange light looks like a gasoline fire. It comes in people's rear windows, bounces off their rearview mirrors, projects a fiery mask across their eyes, reaches into their subconcious, and unearths fears of being pinned, fully conscious, under a detonating gas tank, makes them want to pull over and let the Deliverator overtake them in his black chariot of pepperoni fire...

Only economists can see the 'Whole Picture'

[Colonel Panic]

Great quote from the article:
They are not economists and therefore, they don't necessarily see the whole picture.

Yes, economists have such a great track record when it comes to figuring out what's going to happen next, don't they?

Gosh, it's on a website, it must be true

[Colonel Panic]

Silicon Valley will ad 17,000 jobs this year and 33,000 next year.

"Make it so" by putting it on a website.

Hey, maybe we should announce some other things on websites for a better tomorrow:
* The US Unemployment rate will be under 1% by 2006
* The US budget deficit will be 0 in 2005
* Martians will teach us how to harness zero point energy thus ending all reliance on foreign oil by 2010
* Nobody will die of malnutrition next year!
* All techies will get dates for Valentines day!

Re:Gosh, it's on a website, it must be true

[frdmfghtr]

You had me going for a second, until you got to the last one... :)

Re:China makes a lot of "American" goods

[the arbiter]

No, the middle class is on its way out, big time.

A two class society is what we're getting, which is good. The middle class just screws everything up with their incessant caterwauling about "rights", "dignity" and their inexplicable habit of voting against the interests of those benefactors of society, the glorious corporations.

Re:Sauces, use thereof

[PhotoBoy]

Yes, I believe that sauces will be involved in these 22m new jobs, mainly ketchup and mustard.

The market for techies as cheap burger flippers cannot be underestimated, as we have the skills to operate the tills that seem to so confuse your average McDonald's worker.

Re:The Return Of The Giant Sucking Sound

[Zarf]

The Americans of the future will write articles about the American economy and sell books about the evils of Outsourcing. Americans of the future will be writers, artists, architects, and thespians. They will be free from having to produce anything, having to create wealth, or having to work. It will be a jobless utopia.

...a utopia for anyone with more than 2.2 million dollars in the bank right now. Everyone else will be shipped to Elbonia. Then, the US will institute a national lottery to execute via painless injection a certain percentage of the population each year. This will force the population to implode at a rate that will keep the shrinkage of the nation's wealth and the shrinkage of the population in step. Eventually there will only be five American families left and they will take turns running the government...

And now, cue Rod Sterling!

Re:Faulty logic and misleading headline!

[Anonymous Coward]

That's just fuzzy math from the liberal media.

My spam mails from the RNC say Bush is creating jobs.

(Seriously. "3 more inches guaranteed!" next to "Tax cuts for the rich work!". I'm more inclined to believe the former.)

Re:Sauces, use thereof

[E_elven]

> a big profit margin is an open invitation to competition.

Ah yes. We witness this every day with the overwhelming competition for Microsoft, the oil companies, the HMO's and such entities.

This is the real world now.

How Dilbertian

[ab762]

There's a Dilbert where the PHB outsources a bunch of jobs, then uses the freed-up people to take on an outsourced contract ... which turns out to be the same jobs he outsourced in the first place, through two intermediaries. Or, the old joke about the three arbitrageurs stranded on a desert island - when they were rescued, they were all immensely wealthy from trading coconuts with each other.

Try the Socialism module: Capital Gains Tax

[Vagary]

So I hear the US is having some problems with wealth redistribution? Luckily: the First World has been developing a solution which we think would really help your organization. The solution is called Socialism and our customers have been happily running it for decades.

Your share holders are making profits from their investments in US companies which are outsourcing all their labour; this results in un- and under-employment. However if you activate Socialism's Capital Gains Tax module, then you can redirect some of the stock profits to help the unemployed. Socialism will also directly increase employment by requiring larger government infrastructure.

WARNING: running the Capital Gains Tax module can result in emmigration of share holders unless your organization deploys Incentives. We recommend you study our successful customers' Incentive implementations, for example: Canada's primary Incentive is Natural Beauty, Japan relies on Distinct Culture, and France has Cheese.

We think you'll be really pleased with Socialism, so please take the time to read more about it and consider what it can do for your organization.

The bad news

[rupert2000]

20 million of the new jobs positions will be for translators.