Effects of Outsourcing Jobs to Overseas

Outsourcing emerged on the financial arena during the 1980s and has since then been spreading. Outsourcing production was furthered with the process of globalization which provided a new component leading to the strengthening of resources, skill and labor specializations across the world. The process of outsourcing is using the skill and abilities of a third-party to accommodate society on the foundation of labor. As stated earlier, it was during the 1980s that the process kicked off mainly due to the efforts of corporations when they began to hire labor forces across the world. Even though outsourcing has come out from its developing stages, there are still following effects on the US economy.

I do believe that this is the case for corporations today. Don Lee wrote an article for the L.A. Times which mentioned outsourcing of many healthcare jobs. This article was very interesting to me given the fact that I work in the healthcare industry and have seen this situation first hand. Healthcare facilities and individual providers contract outsourcing specialist. Outsourcing causes a loss of jobs to the American people but I would say that it is not necessarily a bad thing. The cost savings is significant.

The debate over outsourcing in the U.S. is controversial among citizens and economists alike. There are many economists who believe that outsourcing is the next, most logical step in a free market economy (Mankiw & Swage, 2006). These economists believe that the market shifts according to supply and demand. An inherent feature of a free market economy is the free competition of goods and services where the goods and/or services go where the demand is the greatest. According to this view, there is a high demand for labor at a reduced cost and there is an almost endless supply of cheap labor overseas. An example of this would be that a call center attendant would be paid anywhere between twenty and twenty-five thousand dollars a year in compensation whereas the same worker in China would be paid approximately five thousand dollars in compensation per year (Mankiw & Swage, 2006). As anyone can see, there is a large difference between U.S. compensation and overseas compensation. These

Outsourcing is a method used by many corporations in which their products are manufactured in foreign countries often for cheaper labor.This method method of productions has it’s pros and cons.

The loss of manufacturing jobs in the United States is extremely important. As this article states, when manufacturing jobs are lost so are service jobs. For every manufacturing job lost to things like outsourcing, 3 service jobs are lost. Not only are the people doing the manufacturing losing jobs, but

With the current state of the economy, many companies are making the rash decisions of transferring their jobs

An Associated Press-Ipsos poll in May 2004, found that 69 per cent of Americans thought that outsourcing hurts the US economy while only 17 per cent thought it helped . President Bush’s chief economic advisor Greg Mankiw has stated “outsourcing…is something that we should realize is probably a plus for the economy in the long run” . While John Kerry has emphasized, that he is going to stop the outsourcing of American job . With the presidential election coming up, and the candidates giving mixed signals about the effects of outsourcing, it could turn

Overall activity in our nation’s manufacturing sector has declined and in recent years to the lowest level in more than two decades. Thus, the declines resulted in increased unemployment rates among the manufacturing industry in the U.S. One cause of the joblessness increase is because companies employ worker’s that are so productive that fewer employees are required to produce more goods. Ultimately, the U.S. economy is no longer manufacturing-based; rather, nearly 85 percent of U.S. jobs now come from the service sector.

America has always been the leader in science and innovation. It has the best universities and research labs. Many successful entrepreneurs have been raised from this nation. Thus, it has to take benefit from these significant comparative advantages to generate new pools of jobs for its people. As I mentioned in the introduction, we should let history to be our guide to plan for future. Toward the end of the last century Japan was getting ahead of U.S. in most aspects of technology and industry including in automotive and home appliance industries. Most economists at that time predicted that in near future Japan’s economy would pass America’s economy, but this did not happen. Thanks to Americans innovation and ingenuity, the Internet was born in U.S.A which became the prevalent technology of the future and revived the U.S economy. Today, America is in need of such innovations. The world is in shortage of energy and the oil and natural gas resources are running out. Therefore, the price of energy will definitely increase. I believe that the capability of storing and using alternative and renewable energies in day to day life can be the next big discovery that is very likely to revitalize the economy and to create a new generation of jobs. Thus, emphasizing on research on alternative energies can be a feasible strategy to maintain a healthy workforce in the mist of outsourcing.

     The exporting of American jobs is an issue that is important and will become increasingly so as more and more white collar jobs are shipped overseas. American companies in the past few decades have been sending American jobs overseas paying residents of other countries pennies on the dollar what they had paid American workers to do. This saves the companies millions of dollars on labor costs but costs Americans precious jobs.

How is the United States accomplishing this lap of luxury life? To begin with, we seem to outsource numerous jobs to peripheral nations. The cost of having products manufactured in other countries is minimal in contrast to the expenses billed for the same services here. These minimal costs, transfer added wealth into the pockets of the American owners. All comes at a cost to the American people. “This is particularly the case for studies on services outsourced from the United

The modern day American society hosts a broad spectrum of industries with various occupations and professions to engage today’s workforce. America, much like most first world countries is a service economy based on the exchange of knowledge and expertise rather than materials and products. People have a long history of work and work evolution that has ultimately brought America to a service economy producing both strengths and weaknesses within the society and its economy. As America has moved to a service economy, much of the manufacturing and production jobs have moved oversees to third world countries creating a reliance on other economies. This globalization of the workforce as well as unionization, and the

In “Will Your Job Be Exported?”, Alan S. Blinder argues the quality and security of jobs in the future, service sectors in America will be determined by how offshorable they are. Blinder starts out the story with a quote by Edmund Burke, “You can never plan the future by the past”. Although he stated we are doing exactly that when it comes to getting the American workforce ready for jobs of the future. Blinder states “demand for labor appears to have shifted toward the college-educated and away from high school graduates and dropouts” (p. 8). According to Lou Dobbs, “Well under one percent of US service jobs have been outsourced.” Eventually offshoring for service sectors will exceed offshoring for manufacturing-sectors for 3 reasons. First simply because there is a greater amount of service jobs than manufacturing jobs in the US and other countries that are well off. Second, service sector offshoring continues to accelerate due to technological advances thus increasing the range of services offshore. And lastly, (e.g. Chinese and Indian) workers with the capability to perform service jobs continue to increase rapidly.

China is one of our biggest labor competitors. The reason many US companies go to China for outsourcing is again, because of their workforce’s willingness to operate at low costs. Michael Zimmerman describes this as a disparity in worker “tolerance”. Where the low wages found in China are “far lower than U.S.

To the opponents of outsourcing these statistics correctly state why outsourcing is a negative solution to cost cutting and affects the dignity of the people who used to work these jobs. To the people who have lost their jobs their dignity has been partially lost because they are now with out a job that they have worked for most of their lives and now they can’t provide for themselves and their dependents. Also for the companies that have outsourced these jobs they don’t provide adequate services for their employees who’s jobs are being outsourced. To the companies that outsource should help their former employees find other jobs. This would be beneficial to the worker and industry because the worker would loose a means of income and the industry would regain workers. On the other side the supporters of outsourcing say that it helps the dignity of workers who receive the jobs from the American corporations. An example of how outsourcing helps dignity is if you have an industry like web-design and you don’t get a job over a cheaper outsourced company you will have the extra motivation to improve your business or product (Business, ethics, morality).