Alan S. Blinder's Will Your Job Be Exported?

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.

Supporters argue that outsourcing has a minimal effect on job losses, and has increased economic growth in some cases. In actuality, outsourcing has decreased the domestic economy by decimating job opportunities and lowering wages. Steven Pearlstein, economics columnist for the Washington post reaffirmed arguments that outsourcing has decreased employment availability and stability of the economy by saying “There are growing numbers of people who think that what started as a sensible, globalized extension of sending some work outside a firm to specialized companies may in fact be creating long-term structural unemployment in the United States, hollowing out entire industries”. (Pearlstein 3) The IT industry has been especially affected by outsourcing, with many jobs moving overseas to India and Bangladesh, leaving employees in the United States without a job, unable to compete with lower wage offerings. Supporters of outsourcing argue that this business strategy increases everyone’s productivity, raising everyone’s income, and boosting economic growth. Many such studies tend to focus on large multinational corporations, for which the data and anecdotes are more readily available. And indeed, during the 1990s, the data seemed to show that for every one job added abroad, companies added almost two new

Everybody has their own worries and opinions, so they choose to care about different things. Barbara Ehrenreich puts it this way, “The world may be flat, as New York Times columnist Thomas Friedman has written, but I always liked to think that I was standing on a bit of a hill” (608). The truth about outsourcing flies over the heads of many Americans, but hits Ehrenreich right in the face. She writes this article because it’s a journalist’s job is to take in new information that may be hard to understand or meant to be kept on the down low and convey it in a way that’s appealing to many. She implicitly blames CEOs and other high class positions for some of the more outrageous and negative outsourcing situations. Zakaria directly addresses this problem stating: “There is a growing gap between America’s worldly business elite and cosmopolitan class, on the other hand, and the majority of the American people, on the other” (622). America’s worldly business elite and cosmopolitan class are the ones that understand and control outsourcing, while the rest of Americans stay uninformed and are the real victims of outsourcing. Zakaria describes “the rise of the rest” as the third major tectonic power shift. His theory, which makes perfect sense, implies that these power shifts are a natural occurrence. According to Zakaria, the third shift shouldn’t hurt America and Americans shouldn’t feel threatened or worried by it. The thing that Americans should be worried about is the growing gap of power that exists between the elite business class and the rest of Americans. Because the higher class only looks out for themselves and only seeks profit for the firms that they control, many negative things are happening to the lower class, the biggest being the outsourcing of their jobs. This gap in power is what Zakaria thinks could hurt America and make it impossible to adapt to the more globalized world. Americans need

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

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.

The phenomenon has created major suffering for many American and as this outsourcing continues to spread, Americans will demand action (R. Hira 2008, p-95). The book also adds that scholars Ralph Goory and William Baumol have shown that even when the basic model of the economics are used trade does not make both the trading partners better off. The trading in one country will have a negative impact while trading in other country will have a positive impact. The country with negative impact will definitely affect its economy. United States economy being the world’s largest economy; historically, it has maintained a stable GDP growth, a low unemployment rate, a high level of research and capital investment funded by both national, and because of increasing saving rates, increasingly by foreign investors. But offshore outsourcing has increased the unemployment rate dramatically in the decade. And so the economy worsened day by day.

As the world has gotten “smaller” in terms of trade, outsourcing has become a hot topic in much political and economic debate in the United States.

While outsourcing may be beneficial to some of the companies partaking in it, the general consensus is that it ultimately proves to be harmful to the American workforce. The act of outsourcing and shifting many company call centers and technical support teams, or “low skill service jobs,” to foreign countries reduces jobs for those that could truly benefit from them within our own country. The unemployment rate has dramatically increased, and continues to rise, compared to what it has been in years past; yet there are numerous companies which still insist on handing over these “low skill service jobs” to people in other countries such as India. The most obvious and logical reason for outsourcing is reducing costs; people are working for

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 of American jobs overseas is displacing American's in the United States. American blue-collar workers and the Middle Class American will soon be a word of the past if the US government continues outsourcing the low-skill jobs overseas.

     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.

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

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

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.

In the past decade the topic of outsourcing has become a heavily debated subject on if it is ethically correct to outsourcing jobs to foreign countries. Outsourcing has become more and more an option for many companies and not just an economic fad. The decision to outsource is a difficult one for any company to make because there are many advantages and disadvantages to consider. The decision to outsource affects many people, communities, and industries so if a corporation decides to outsource they must consider how it will affect human dignity, the common good of the economy, and subsidiary.