The Outsourcing of American Jobs
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.
As the problem of job outsourcing becomes more of an issue in politics, elected officials like the President and Congress will no longer be able to ignore the dilemma. The war in Iraq has been at the forefront of the presidential race but the importance of outsourcing
…show more content…
Since outsourcing has begun effecting both party lines, Republican and Democrat officials will be interested because members of congress are self-interested. Congressmen who continue to evade the issue and avoid taking a strong stance on this issue will lose votes when it comes to election time and that doesn’t serve in the best interest for any politician. The other big player in this issue is big business. As labor is offered at cheaper rates overseas, it is very tempting for businesses to take advantage of that resource. Saving money is a great way to raise profits and stock values of companies. This brings up the hardest part of this issue. Americans own stock in the big companies that outsource jobs, if the company does well then the stock does well and it helps the investor. The average family makes between 33 to 45 thousand dollars a year. People in this bracket generally rely on their job to provide income and security for their family, not the value of stock. The middle class is taking the biggest hit and has the most to loose from outsourcing. The middle class has traditionally been the backbone of America ever since WWII. It has always been in any candidate’s best interest to appeal to this group of voters.
There are many things on the American political agenda that
In that context, the increasing of outsourcing in the US is inevitable. The 2016 presidential candidates mentions about the negative effect of outsourcing to the US due to exporting of jobs to over-sea vendors. The outsourcing opponents claim that outsourcing is having a negative effect on the American economy, as one problem is solved by creating another problem. The jobs were taken away from the US, double the unemployment ratio and seriously impact to Americans, especially the disability.
By 2004, more than 80 percent of U.S. executive boardrooms will have discussed offshore sourcing, and more than 40 percent of U.S. enterprises will have completed some type of pilot or will be sourcing IT (information technology) services. In fact, some of the biggest firms in the United States have been seriously discussing outsourcing recently. One of these companies being IBM, the world's biggest computer maker, discussed saving about $168 million beginning in 2006 by moving thousands of programming jobs overseas, according to internal information provided. U.S. businesses, battered by the recent three year bear market in stocks and an economy struggling to find its footing, have already developed a taste for super cheap labor in developing countries, where workers are increasingly better trained especially if they've spent significant time working in the United States on temporary visas. The impact of overseas outsourcing could be significant; many economists doubt the trend is big enough yet to disrupt the broader U.S. economy. Imports of business services account for less than 1/20 of 1 percent of gross domestic product, the broadest measure of the nation's economy. At the least, it's not doing much to end the longest U.S. labor-market slump since World War II. More than 9.3 million people are
It is believed that offshoring will have minimal effects on the employment rate in America due to the theory that when jobs are moved to other countries, the workers who have become unemployed will find employment as new opportunities are created. In reality, the adjustment will be difficult as proven by data collected by the Bureau of Labor Statistics Displaced Workers Survey in the year 2004. A survey showed that workers who were laid off between the years 2001 and 2003 remained unemployed at the beginning of 2004. It was also recorded that 43 percent of those who managed to find work earned the same pay as they did prior to being laid off, but the remaining 22 percent did not. These facts rely on the rate at which
Many businesses in United States manufacture their product overseas. This involves manufacturing products outside United States where the labor cost is cheaper. Because of cheap labor, it is often more economical for a U.S. company to manufacture overseas and pay the shipping costs than to manufacture in the United States. For a company, the savings may be substantial. However, there are negative impacts on U.S. employment, as many jobs in the United States are being outsourced and replaced by overseas positions. The manufacturers outsource production projects to save time, money or resources. The manufacturing is outsourced so as to remain competitive and maintain a steady work flow. Without outsourcing, manufacturing costs could escalate to the point at which no product would sell and all employees would have no work. Outsourcing comes
‘Is your job next?’ headline blared, followed by the disturbing preview of the article inside: “A new round of globalization is sending upscale jobs offshore. They include chip design engineering, basic research— even financial analysis. Can America lose these jobs and still prosper (R. Hira, 2008, p-1)?” The reaction of this news was swift and divided. Definitely large corporations that will be outsourcing will make huge profits in the long run but “what about the American citizens?”
Did you know that “the nation has lost more than 2.5 million manufacturing jobs and more than 850,000 professional service and information sector jobs, due to overseas shipping since 2001? (Aflcio)” It is clear to me that some big business companies don’t value the protection of employees very highly. By some big business, ill single one out and state that Goldman Sachs has shipped approximately 500,000 American jobs overseas in the past few years. That’s about half of the total net job loss during these past years (Aflcio). This shows that companies are reluctant to stay in American and scared of the current economic situation. It upsets me to see American jobs being shipped overseas at such a rough time
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
Jobs outsourced to China have subsided American employment opportunities and have helped contribute to wage erosion since 2001(Peralta). Between 2001 to 2013, 3.2 million American jobs were lost and three-quarters of those jobs were in manufacturing (Peralta). When you outsource jobs to different countries because it is cheaper, you are helping destroy your own country and could even be supporting slave and child labor and companies do this because they are greedy and want to make more money even though they could be getting low quality, brand damaging products
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
As many laborers with a minimal skills lose jobs, the market loses a household with income that is disposable, which in turn leads to fewer consumers in the market. This can be extremely detrimental to many economies as when fewer, and fewer households can spend income freely the market that those households are a part of begins to thrives less. As a study by the U.S. Census Department shows as many multinational companies outsourced over 2.4 million jobs, and cut 2.9 million domestically (washington post, pg.1). The dramatic impact that this has on the consumer as well as the market is devastating. Moreover, outsourcing of the jobs offered to the middle class, which is the main market of consumers in many first world countries. This fact is alarming as corporations who don’t turn a profit can’t trickle down jobs, creating a self sustaining system where a corporation will begin to outsource more jobs to keep costs low and prices attractive to the average consumer. By killing domestic jobs corporations are ,marginalizing their profits which in turn will give them less money to hire potential employees and help their job market
Because of the greediness of large corporations, most factories producing things used in America are located outside the U.S., taking employment opportunities away from Americans.
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.
These immigrates do not have any problems with there wages because they made little or less in their home country. In the past decade, “American jobs screamed out of the United States at an ever-accelerating rate of speed,” says Wooldridge, “While American workers stood in unemployment lines, major corporations insourced, outsourced and offshored jobs to Third World countries. Why? They could obtain labor for $1.00 an hour and sometimes less. Capitalism knows no loyalty to man, beast or country.” One example of a corporation exercising this scheme is Bank of America. This company cut 5,000 jobs, and sent 1,250 of them to India. The company has also announced that they would cut 12,000 in the next two years or so. General Electric has also sent jobs to India. The company has sent about 12,000 jobs to India.
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.
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).