The Rich World's Disappearing Jobs

[CShine]

In the developed world and particularly in the United States, the scope of jobs disappearing overseas is widening beyond all imagining, to professions that almost nobody expected to be hit, and with far higher incomes than anybody thought possible as globalization bonds with the law of unintended consequences.

The catalyst is the Internet. As instant communication becomes more ubiquitous, the developed world's white-collar professions, from CAD/CAM (computer-aided design/computer-aided manufacturing) to accounting to medicine to architecture to aircraft design to research and development to engineering to equity research and financial management to knowledge management to revenue-cycle management - a whole panorama of high-income employment - are inexorably going.

The impact on American and European society is inevitably going to be far more profound than almost anyone understands today. It is already responsible for major positive changes in the living standards of the middle class in other parts of the world.

The United States currently accounts for as much as 70 percent of the world's "outsourcing", as it is called, or sometimes offshoring. McKinsey & Co, the international consulting firm, projects that the flight of jobs offshore to developing countries will grow by 30-40 percent a year over the next five years. By the highest estimates, as many as a million jobs have disappeared overseas from the US job market since the current economic slowdown began in 2000 and could represent a major reason for the struggle the US economy is undergoing to right itself.

http://www.atimes.com/atimes/South_Asia/EJ08Df03.html

[DemExpat]

1. My kids have jobs in nice restaurants

while they study.....and my husband, after telling me about an article similar to this one, remarked that at least there will 'always' be jobs in that branch!.......

("As long as people have money to eat out, that is", I replied.)

DemEx

[DuctapeFatwa]

2. Empowering Americans to work for a globally competitive wage

It will definitely mean some changes for many of the erstwhile affluent.

The free market value of a day's work in the US had already fallen well below the free market value of a day's survival long ago.

As increasing numbers of people are priced out of the market, an already extreme situation will only become more so.

Affluent persons who are not affected by outsourcing can turn to nations like Brazil, Honduras and Rwanda for strategies for coping with the resultant society-wide changes.

[izzie]

3. Well we use most of the worlds goods and are less than 5 %

May be we are being forced into giving all this up.I have thought about this for years. Is it fair we have so much and others so little ? We do get a lot of stuff cheap and it cost these countries we take from alot. If things were more even it would be good but I do not think that is what we are doing at all. We are making a few large Corp rich only and we as tax payers are paying for our own down fall. We already beg for pills from a gov. that used alot of our money to think up these very pills. Yet still half do not vote and half that vote keep this going. I just do not understand it at all.

[AndyTiedye]

4. Use Free Trade as a Lever for Workers Rights and Environmental Protection

Organizations like the WTO should be enforcing the highest standards for
environmental and worker protection, not the lowest common denominator.

Provide a level playing field and a safe one.