Does anyone else notice that we're constantly losing jobs to outsourcing?

Question

I have great marketable skills but today's jobs require more and people are still losing jobs. I feel we live in an unstable society where jobs are hard to get and cost of living is still high. Guys I meet ask me what I do for a living and not what's my favorite hobby and such.

Answer 1

We don't seem to be losing jobs to outsourcing overall in the US, despite public opinion to the contrary.

Now, I know that certain specific jobs are outsourced, don't get me wrong. And certain specific sectors are being hurt some. But in the economy as a whole, a global free market is doing us good as much as bad.

An overall unemployment rate of 4.6% is really pretty good, you know. France, for example, had 7.3% unemployment last time I checked.

And even in some of the sectors where there is the most outsourcing, unemployment is actually quite reasonable. For example the IT occupations, where people have been screaming about outsourcing for years, the unemployment rate is... 2.1% !

I sympathize with anyone who's lost a job and can't find a new one, but overall outsourcing just hasn't been as big an impact as you might think.
ftp://ftp.bls.gov/pub/suppl/empsit.cpseea30.txt

P.S. Gem, with respect, if you think a large number of people overall have given up looking for work, you might look at the total percentage of employed across the entire population. We are currently (latest figures from 2006) at 63.1% of the entire population being employed, which is close to the figure 10 years before (63.2%) and well above that 20 years before (60.7%).
http://www.bls.gov/cps/cpsaat1.pdf

You may be right to think they're taking part-time jobs, but consider that in August 2007 among part-time workers almost 80% said that they were part-time for NON-economic reasons.
http://www.bls.gov/webapps/legacy/cpsatab5.htm

Answer 2

Outsourcing has been one of the cheapest way to produce or products or render services specially if jobs are outsources to countries with cheaper labor and administrative cost. Aside from it being cheaper, companies can focus more on more critical business activities. Best way for people not to lose their jobs is continuously acquire skills so their purposefulness in the company still exist.

Answer 3

enoriverbend will be eating his words in the next year or so.

The bs about the economy being ok, is just that, bs.

An entire segment of the American middle class has been wiped out, and no amount of "service" jobs will bring it back.

The only things carrying our economy right now are housing and healthcare. And guess what, housing boom is over and when people lose their jobs they lose their healthcare, so I fully expect that to tank too.

We are being sold a bill of goods to keep the rich American stockholders happy in the million dollar homes, the chickens are coming home to roost my friends and it is going to be nasty.

Instead of just perusing government statistics, get in there and break them down. The unemployment rate does not reflect the FACT (also from the government statisticians) that the percentage of people that have GIVEN up looking for a good job has jumped, it doesn't show the percentage of people who took jobs at 50% of their former pay, it just doesn't show reality.

But, what goes around comes around and the massive outsourcing and layoffs have resulted in a nasty side effect to increased corporate profits. Corporations are losing their customers. See, people that don't have good jobs quit buying things.

Look to Michigan as our "one state" recession is getting ready to go nationwide, and for the same exact reasons.

Hang on folks, it is going to be a bumpy ride.

Answer 4

I actually have a job due to outsourcing. I was hired specifically to work with a custom software application written by an American company that had been bought by a bank in Central America.

I am actually outsourced from a bank in Central America.
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Answer 5

Yup. The world is getting flat. There's not fighting it. Most of the jobs that people get did not exist 20 years ago.