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 American jobs seems to have been slightly overshadowed. If the issue of outsourcing is not watched carefully and a definitive plan hammered out, a trickling down of negative effects may occur within the U.S. economy. However, there is a polarized opinion on the effects of this “phenomenon”.
In recessions of the past the American worker was laid off with the impression they would be rehired as soon as demand for goods and services were presented again. Now people in jobs from computer programmers to telephone operators are losing their jobs and never returning to the same field again. The big issue here is that if we continue outsourcing specific jobs overseas we could erase a whole industry of job opportunity from the American people. Economists say the framework of the U.S. labor force has been changed due to past outsourcing of jobs by this country. The more outsourcing that continues the more our job force’s structure will change. As a result, the American worker can no longer wait to be rehired into the same job or profession. Using their time while unemployed, Americans are retraining themselves and attempt to step into an entirely different career.
There are many key people that factor in on this issue of job outsourcing. First is the American worker. When most people think of jobs being sent overseas they think of factory workers or telephone operators, but the recent trend in the outsourcing of jobs has been higher paying jobs like accountants, computer programmers, or financial analysts. These jobs are considered white-collar jobs. In this election candidates will try to appeal to everyone who votes. Bl...
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...ing of jobs that Americans are qualified and trained to do. If a company were going to outsource jobs maybe a good policy solution would be to match, if not double the number of jobs in the states to that of the number of jobs being shipped away. Another thing to consider is that the government doesn’t necessarily have to directly regulate business hiring. The government could impose a self-regulatory policy where as the big companies could set their own rules and guidelines and have an industry standard for the amount of outsourcing a company can do.
In Kingdon’s “Three Streams” of agenda studying, problem stream, political stream, and policy stream the three streams of job outsourcing haven’t quite met together for a real policy that is set in stone. There is definitely a problem stream that is rapidly growing. The political stream is overflowing so much the issue is being drowned out by other political issues. As for the policy stream, it seems to be a small stream that no one can really figure out. Once someone finds a fair and just set of policy regulations and picks a good policy window to present it in I believe there could possibly be a good solution to this problem.
Recently outsourcing has been in the news, especially during political election years. It seems to be a phenomenon that is causing much concern among the population. But exactly how is outsourcing effecting both workers and businesses? And is it as big of a problem as politicians describe?
Since the concept of outsourcing was introduced it has been a subject of debate between politicians and citizens of the United States. Remarkably, it was the United States who supported outsourcing and now it is the United States that feels its economic progress is being threatened by outsourcing. One may argue that the financial situations that existed two decades earlier are not the same as they are today, thus the change of time, business priorities of economies have also changed.
One of the hottest trends today for big corporations is outsourcing and offshoring. Outsourcing simply means a company based in one nation will hire from other nations in order to more efficient accomplish its goals. It makes sense on the part of the corporation, why pay a programmer in the US $80,000 a year when they can pay a programmer in India less than 1/10th of that salary, and make him a very happy man. This because even when he is earning 1/10th of the US salary, he is still earning more money than he ever hoped to get in that industry in India. It seems like a win-win situation1, but there is still a loser: The growing unemployed population of the US. As more jobs go overseas, more US citizens are finding themselves becoming obsolete.
Many businesses hire low skilled workers for low wage, but many Americans are not willing to work for low wage. Moreover, many businesses want to keep their costs in a very low price, to achieve the high profit margin. They get their employees from other countries and moving production over the world. Many workers in the United States come from halfway across the world. Low-paid workers are used to produce and export raw material. Companies use cheap raw materials to produce products and invest to other countries with high profits. “People in the south still produced items for export to north--but now they export manufactured food as well as raw materials” (Chomsky 5). The New England was the first one to try out with new business in the U.S. southeast in the beginning of 21th century to find lower cost. “The New England textile industry was one of the first to experiment with plant relocation, shifting its production to the U.S southeast starting at the very beginning of twentieth century in search of lower costs” (Chomsky 5). The relocation program was very successful by the end of the
According to the article “Restoring American Competitiveness” by Gary P. Pisano and Willy C. Shih, the United States industries have worn down competition through the damages from outsourcing manufacturing. There are several issues that have caused serious problems to the U.S. economy, which have caused the decline of trade due to shortage of innovation and competition. Theses problems are lack of funding for research and development by government and businesses and poor financial decisions made by management for outsourcing. There are several recommendations that the government and business executives can do to rebuild U.S. industries.
Do you ever wonder what our nations underlying focus is? The answer is simple and should be fairly easy to guess… Money! Outsourcing originated from someone coming up with the idea that we can make products for practically nothing in other countries and make very high profits. Although it seems like a great idea to businesses, it negatively affects our country. American consumers are buying these products that are made in other countries and the companies profits are continuing to rapidly increase. At the same time, people that are in the production field of work in America are losing their jobs because producers would rather pay foreign workers to get the job done for a much lower wage. When it comes down to it, one of the reasons our economy is suffering is because of outsourcing. Basically, it all comes down to money. The consumers don’t pay close enough attention to where the products are made. Therefore, consumers are spending extra money and are causing outsourcing to thrive. The lack of knowledge Americans have on the subject of consumers affecting outsourcing is leading our country to economic stress but if we begin to recognize the issue, the jobs we could potentially save may be our own.
Slaughter said it’s a common perception that hiring overseas means fewer jobs in the United States. Not so, he said. While job losses are certainly true for some companies, statistics have shown that, generally, increased hires abroad also have complementary increases here.” (Kibbe, 2004)
With new technologies and advanced globalization, we see a lot of jobs being outsourced from the United States. At the same time, we also see a lot of goods being made in other countries. Goods, which used to be made right here, in the US. Both of these trends lead to American people losing jobs. At the same time the CEO’s of these companies see an increase in profit and personal income due to decreased manufacturing
... Today, state and federal policies tolerate and compensate for the obliteration of U.S. jobs. These policies distribute financial breaks and government bonds, while still giving entrance to the U.S. market to companies that destroy American jobs and abuse employee’s rights by shipping their labor elsewhere. Government must reform policies that encourage and reward job creation and implement policies of research that will create new jobs for the future. Works Cited Corporate Myths about Shipping Jobs Overseas.
This paper provides rhetorical analyses of two presentations pertaining to outsourcing. Neither particularly opposes outsourcing, yet each provides information addressing two different outsourcing concerns. Kibbe’s 2004 article “Outsourcing: the good, the bad and the inevitable” focuses on United States (U.S.) job impact. Van Heerden’s 2010 speech “Making Global Labor Fair” focuses on human rights impact.
Outsourcing has been around for many years. In this paper I will discuss some of the history of outsourcing, the goods things about outsourcing, and the bad things about outsourcing.
Large corporations seeking the extra dollar to pocket are willing to spend whatever it takes to reduce the cost of production and increase profit margins. Doing whatever it takes in some instances can help men moving operations overseas to developing countries who are glad to be working. These developing countries unemployment rates are extremely high, so any job that pays is great to have. Americans lose jobs to foreign workers because the American economy is one of the largest in the world and its citizens enjoy great standards of living, when juxtaposed with a city of the same size in Taiwan. Labor costs play a huge and crucial role in corporations, which in turn pay the profits to the corporate giants who run, manage, and own the businesses.
Whilst there are clear risks involved with outsourcing, it remains rather simple to see why more and more companies are attracted to this current business model. Cost saving, and lots of it! Comedian Woody Allen once so eloquently said, "Money is better than poverty, if only for financial reasons". It seems that the owners of big businesses today have taken that message to heart. They only care for their business and not their nation or fellow countrymen.
In conclusion, it is a fact that offshore outsourcing has its benefits. It is also true that it has its downside. The main downside is the fact that when a company outsources a service to another country American workers do get laid off. However, this is only a short term effect, and it is nothing to worry about it. Most will not even be affected. The long term effects of offshore outsourcing are that it promotes business growth, it encourages business competition and it is a factor in the development of new jobs. All of which outweigh the downside. It is important to see that offshore outsourcing is not something to be afraid of. It is actually a good business tactic and it has many positive effects on the economy.
When Americans hear the word “offshore outsourcing”, they automatically assume that Americans are losing their jobs to foreign countries. Most of these jobs that companies outsource such as the garment industry jobs are offshore outsourced because they are labor intensive jobs. According to Timmerman