This report analyses how American Companies started offshoring or moving white collar and blue collar positions to other countries with low pay since the 1960’s. Also, the purpose of this report is to highlight the advantages and disadvantages of offshoring jobs to countries with low pay. This report will analyze how the consumers, communities, and corporations are beneficiated and/or affected.
In the 1960’s American Companies started offshoring job positions to Asian countries, and Hispanic countries. American Companies started offshoring American Jobs because their business was more profitable in other countries, so in order for the companies to be closer to those countries American Companies started hiring employees in those countries.
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Offshoring may occur inside the same business and involve movement of work to a different location of that company outside the United States, or to a different company altogether where wages are often lower and other conditions are favorable because they lower a company's overhead. Why do companies decide to offshore outsourcing? The major motivation as any one might suppose is to decrease costs and thus increase revenues. The manufacturing industry cost in the United States is four times higher than in China or India. Conversely, the difference in manufacture is three to one. Employees can be significantly more industrious if they are equipped with the required tools and technology. Also, the lower rate of labor in emerging countries does not matter unless one also takes into account efficiency and quality. The profits of outsourcing American jobs is not only about decreasing costs but also increasing manufacture. But beyond profits and reduction of cost, companies anticipate advancing quality and productivity; decrease the extent of time required to generate new products; and respond to orders, complaints and inquiries from consumers. The loss of jobs was unavoidable after China entered the World Trade Organization in 2001. As part of the treaty
The United States has a long history of employing laborers from other countries. In 1850, Before Mexicans were prevalent; Chinese workers were hired in California
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
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.
With the implementation of minimum wage and rising production costs in the United States, many companies have found themselves looking for a way to save money on production. Clothing manufacturers such as Nike have used labor forces in other countries, mainly in Asia to produce their products. These countries can offer similar quality labor for a cheaper cost on wages. The lower or non existent minimum wage laws in foreign countries allow companies like Nike to cut production costs drastically, while still being able to produce quality products. Similar trends are starting to creep into software companies. They are finding a workforce able to do similar work as the American workers, but for less pay.
Since so many immigrants moved to the U.S. factories were full of people working for them. So many people needed jobs and the ones
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.
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
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
One of the concerns in regards to the outsourcing of jobs is that wages of American jobs versus the wages of the Chinese, Japanese, Indians and Philippians are much less. If these workers were using the same identical technology and having the same identical skills were paid the same wages, there would be no problem. (Greene, 2006) It's also believed that if the US continues to trade freely with the overseas countries then the powerful drag of their far lower wages will
The book Out of Site by Erik Loomis discusses many problems when it comes to American companies outsourcing their factory jobs. One of the issues that he discusses are the horrible working conditions that plague foreign countries. These awful working conditions used to be normal in the United States in the early 19th century but laws soon changed that. Now these working conditions have just changed their location and continue to take people’s lives every year.
At the time of development of globalization there were many concerns about its benefits. However, it has brought significant changes in all segments of human life and International business is one area in which it contributed heavily (Reich, 1998). Companies all over the world are currently formulating their business strategies mainly after considering the trends in global market instead of domestic market. Outsourcing and offshoring are some of the new business principles emerged in this world after the implementation of globalization (Samimi and Jentabad, 2014). The core of these new business concepts is to exploit the business opportunities in overseas countries as much as possible (Samimi and Jentabad, 2014).
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.
A final reason for the company to offshore part of their operations is access new markets. Since the company is not restricted to just the domestic market, offshoring gives the company global presence and the ability to access developing markets in Third World countries. By streamlining the company’s production processes and supply chains globally, companies can lower their prices increase demand for their products, thereby attracting new customers and entering new markets.