Silly us. We thought the reason
corporate America rushed to move tech jobs to India was because they thought it saved money. Not
so.According to an Indian research and IT group, the US population is aging and will suffer a
labor shortage by 2010. Coupled with slow population growth, there just won't be enough qualified
IT workers to go around. Hence, India will be poised to pick up the slack. According to
the report, the US can fend off the crisis by global sourcing in the form of immigration, temporary
workers and offshoring. "The study clearly shows the necessity of offshore activity to support
the growth of the US economy. The report also found that offshoring keeps US businesses
competitive, creates new markets for US goods and services, and fills the shortfall in services
labour that the US is expected to face in the next seven years," said the Nasscom statement.
Wow. And you thought Rumsfeld was a spin expert. But clearly, the economy is not
growing enough. So if offshoring is necessary to support growth, that must mean we haven't sent
enough jobs overseas yet.Don't you just love it when a plan comes together? Not to worry,
though. The good jobs are staying here. The offshoring of IT services, the report
argues, has allowed US workers to tackle specialised and creative work, while more run-of-the-mill
tasks have been pushed abroad. The proportion of specialists in the US IT workforce, it notes,
increased from 38 percent in 1983 to 74 percent last year. Ah, so that's it. Just the
run-of-the-mill jobs went offshore. Although my C++ and Java programming friends who were recenlty
laid off may disagree with the characterization of their jobs being so run-of-the-mill. Or like my tech
writer friends at Computer Associates, who recently discovered their jobs were being sent to India.
Yep, their documentation will now be written by non-native speakers of English.The
report admits that there will be a short-term impact on the US employment market as 1.3 million
jobs move offshore in the next seven years. About 1 million workers in the country will be
affected, but 70 percent of these will be only temporarily out of work, says the report.As more
than 8 million jobs are reallocated every quarter in the US economy, the reallocation process
should not be a strain. The remaining 300,000 workers will require retraining, suggested the
report. That pesky short-term impact, huh? I'm sure those who will be defaulting on
mortgages will be comforted to know it won't be "a strain".
3:02:52 PM 
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