Waging war on WCW (white collar workers)
The blue collar workers aren't the only ones who will feel the pinch of global competition. Three major forces have been born that will deliver a swift and painful blow to many professional workers; that is, transoceanic fiber-optic cable, the communications satellite, and the Internet. These technologies make it easy to link China or India to the US. This can be done at little cost. With company executives watching costs more than anything, you know what this will mean.
Offshoring manufacturing was painful for many but will pale in comparison to what is expected for the WCWs. During the struggle with Japan decades ago, American incomes exceeded Japan's by a ratio of 2 to 1. Of course, the services battle is now with India, where the American to Indian ratio is 10 to 1. Sure this s1peaks good news for the American economy and many will gain greatly from this outsourcing of labor. But the ones who lose their jobs or suffer from pay cuts will pay a bigger price.
During the manufacturing rush abroad, manufacturing jobs only accounted for 28% of all non-farm jobs. However, today, the service jobs constitute about 83% of all non-farm jobs. That's a much big potential hit to the American working population.
Lastly, this impact will be a price paid by employees, not the employer. Years ago with the foreign car import crisis (if you can call it that), companies and executives alike felt the financial brunt. This time, executives will gain from the reduction in cost in using foreign labor but the employees of the company will pay the price.
The big point to understand here is that it's not so critical the number of jobs lost, 3.3 million by 2018 according to Forrester Research, but the impact on real wages for American employees. Why? Well, each year we'll have more and more Americans competing among more and more Indians who will work for a tenth or a fifth less.
According to Stephen Cohen and Bradford Delong, both from UC Berkeley, career transition assistance, government funding and portable benefits will be crucial to ensuring worker flexibility. They anticipate that the upcoming shockwave will be greater than any other in US history. At least, you now have signs to watch for.
Of course, you can always begin building your Blitz team now and use them to help you figure out how to stay off any future potential impacts.
Todd
"Never Climb Alone"
S. Cohen and B. Delong, "Shaken and Stirred," State of the Union January/February 2005 Atlantic Monthly. <http://www.theatlantic.com/doc/200501/cohen>.
Offshoring manufacturing was painful for many but will pale in comparison to what is expected for the WCWs. During the struggle with Japan decades ago, American incomes exceeded Japan's by a ratio of 2 to 1. Of course, the services battle is now with India, where the American to Indian ratio is 10 to 1. Sure this s1peaks good news for the American economy and many will gain greatly from this outsourcing of labor. But the ones who lose their jobs or suffer from pay cuts will pay a bigger price.
During the manufacturing rush abroad, manufacturing jobs only accounted for 28% of all non-farm jobs. However, today, the service jobs constitute about 83% of all non-farm jobs. That's a much big potential hit to the American working population.
Lastly, this impact will be a price paid by employees, not the employer. Years ago with the foreign car import crisis (if you can call it that), companies and executives alike felt the financial brunt. This time, executives will gain from the reduction in cost in using foreign labor but the employees of the company will pay the price.
The big point to understand here is that it's not so critical the number of jobs lost, 3.3 million by 2018 according to Forrester Research, but the impact on real wages for American employees. Why? Well, each year we'll have more and more Americans competing among more and more Indians who will work for a tenth or a fifth less.
According to Stephen Cohen and Bradford Delong, both from UC Berkeley, career transition assistance, government funding and portable benefits will be crucial to ensuring worker flexibility. They anticipate that the upcoming shockwave will be greater than any other in US history. At least, you now have signs to watch for.
Of course, you can always begin building your Blitz team now and use them to help you figure out how to stay off any future potential impacts.
Todd
"Never Climb Alone"
S. Cohen and B. Delong, "Shaken and Stirred," State of the Union January/February 2005 Atlantic Monthly. <http://www.theatlantic.com/doc/200501/cohen>.
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