High-tech job market lost 400,000 jobs

[pickel]

In all, the researchers said, the job market for high-tech workers shrank by 18.8 percent, to 1,743,500 over the period studied

http://www.cnn.com/2004/TECH/biztech....ap/index.html

From writing code to slopping burgers ( if you're lucky ) not to mention manufacturing jobs, service jobs, and communication jobs. How many here have been affected by out sourcing and cheap foreign labor ???? And it's only geeting worse.

http://www.cnn.com/CNN/Programs/lou....ight/book.html

[RayH]

It may lose more:

http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/articl...UGF68UJNC1.DTL

[J-Excel]

Suck. Losing low paying grunt jobs to Mexico or even Canada due to NAFTA was bad enough. But losing tech jobs to India... geez.

I have a feeling though that the master plan here is to shrink the job market to match the upcoming shrinkage of workers when the baby-boomers retire. Without losing some jobs we'd be in a world of hurt in a few years.

[johnnycombat]

Quote:

Originally Posted by J-Excel

I have a feeling though that the master plan here is to shrink the job market to match the upcoming shrinkage of workers when the baby-boomers retire. Without losing some jobs we'd be in a world of hurt in a few years.

Interesting logic. Of course what is happening now is we have less workers paying in to social security at the same time more people are retiring which of course will eventual cause the system to become insolvent. This will mean that there will be people who paid into the system all of their lives and will get nothing in return.

[J-Excel]

When the baby-boomers start drawing there will be many more getting SS and fewer people paying in. That's simple math. No way around that unless we import more workers. It's either import more workers to get us over the hump, or export jobs. IMO exporting jobs is likely the lesser of the two evils. We can pull those jobs back later a lot easier than kicking the imported workers out.

[johnnycombat]

How does exporting jobs help? Shouldn't that make things worse?

[J-Excel]

If we keep those jobs here that the baby-boomers will be vacating, who will work them? We'll have more jobs that eligible workers. Although, that would be a good excuse for completely eliminating welfare.

[johnnycombat]

Why would having too many jobs be a bad thing? Sure some would eventual go oversees but some would stay. That would also create a bettered labor market, which would push up wages? Also it would allow baby boomers to work longer in their retirement earning more money thereby reducing their dependence on SS (yes I know the current system allows them to draw out even if they are working past age 68).

[originel]

There are several problems with having too many jobs:
1) Workers become rare and, following supply and demand, employers have to start paying employees more which will lead to an economic decline if it's bad enough.
2) When no one is there to work the jobs, the work doesn't get done. So if a car company requires X number of people to work to fill the manufacturing plant, but only X/2 people actually work there, then they could potentially make only half as many cars. So revenues decrease because of a lack of supply. The prices for the cars would go up as well, but not immediately and the company would suffer another revenue set back.

There would be some immediate gains for some people, but overall it would lead to some pretty bad inflation most likely. Also the economy itself would start to slump.

[J-Excel]

There was a good article in Newsweek or Time a few months ago about this. I'm not an economist, but the article made it pretty clear that a worker shortage would be a really, really bad thing. I don't think driving up wages is as good as it sounds. Everything is relative. Higher wages means higher cost of goods means higher prices means a higher wage will buy you exactly what your current wage buys you today. Whereas sending some tech support or programming work to India for 1/6 the labor cost means lower prices means you wage will buy you more, assuming unemployment is reasonable (~5%). And those jobs can always come back. For example, Dell is bringing a lot of their tech support work back to the US from India already.