Outsourcing is Good
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Outsourcing is Good
| Sat, 01-31-2004 - 11:22am |
Some critics argue that "outsourcing" of service sector employment to foreign countries will lead to a serious decline in U.S. white-collar jobs. In reality, outsourcing will reshape but not undermine U.S. service sector employment, making companies more efficient. It will also benefit consumers and export businesses...

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In a rural community of 4,000 there are about 1,000 wage earners. (The percent of elderly is higher than the state average and children are not usually in the labor force.) If 250 jobs are eliminated that is a high percentage. Sure unemployment benefits will carry for a while, but retail purchasing will be reduced, new housing starts will virtually be eliminated and, yes, those most able will commute to larger towns 30 to 50 miles away for jobs. When those people get those jobs, some of them will relocate and even those that don't will tend to shop in the larger community creating more economic difficulty for their town of origin. As this trend continues, the community is left with those too old or less able to work. Services dry up and the once viable little community dies. We have towns in this area that once had thriving little businesses that now have not so much as a gas station or a grocery store. IMO this is stupid economic and social policy.
There was some information out today about how, new entrepreneurs are showing up as out of work in the jobless statistics.
If the following is what you're referring to, then it's much more complicated than that...
Odd Jobs
Why the unemployment rate is really higher than it looks.
By Daniel
cl-Libraone

Thus, two years into the new business cycle, GDP growth is strong. But the fruits of that growth have yet to flow to working families in the form of rising real wages and faster job growth. The economic recovery will not be on firm ground until consumption and growth are able to rest on broad-based gains in labor income.
Greatest sustained job loss since the Great Depression
Since the recession began 33 months ago in March 2001, 2.4 million jobs have disappeared, a 1.8% contraction. The Bureau of Labor Statistics began its series on monthly jobs numbers in 1939 (at the end of the Great Depression). In every previous episode of recession and job decline since 1939, the number of jobs had fully recovered to above the pre-recession peak within 31 months of the start of the recession. The picture is bleaker for private-sector jobs, which have dropped by 2.9 million since March 2001, a 2.6% contraction. (See State data and organizations for more information on your state.)
Since the official end of the recession in November 2001, total jobs have shrunk by 0.8 million (an 0.6% contraction) and private-sector jobs have dropped by 0.9 million (or 0.8%).
http://jobwatch.org/
Economic growth not reaching middle- and lower wage earners
The lack of job growth over the current recovery has been amply documented (see EPI's JobWatch.org for a detailed analysis of the job shortfall). Less well known is the toll that the persistently weak labor market is taking on the living standards of middle- and lower wage workers.
See Graph at http://www.epinet.org/content.cfm/webfeatures_snapshots
Each bar in the figure above represents the change in real weekly earnings of full-time workers age 25 and older, from the last quarter of 2002 to the last quarter of 2003. The trend reveals two notable facts: first, those in the middle of the earnings scale and below (at or below the 50th percentile) are losing ground—their weekly earnings were lower, after adjusting for inflation, at the end of 2003 than one year earlier. Second, the pattern of earnings changes is highly skewed: the losses are greatest for the lowest earners, while the weekly earnings of those at the top of the scale (the 90th percentile) grew by 1.1%. This pattern of earnings growth suggests that while the economy is expanding, the benefits of growth are flowing to those at the top of the wage scale.
Source: Bureau of Labor Statistics, "Usual Weekly Earnings of Wage and Salary Workers," various issues.
If rural America has something to offer, then people will stay. If not, they move. It is up to hired government officials to promote business and offer incentives for business to stay. Where in the constitution does it say you have to right to a job in your "hometown"?
Do you realize Nevada, Arizona, and New Mexico are booming? That's because the out-of-control left wing tax-and-spend CA goverments forced companies to new and exciting places to do business- and the people moved.
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Stockholders are NOT all "rich owners". I own lots of stock and I expect MY corporations to perform.
There is no "serious" problem in rural America. I am amazed at the left-wing rhetoric in your post.
I'm in the Ocean Shipping industry, and when the CA bully ILWU longshoremans unions tried unionizing the shipping companies, they packed up and moved to Jersey. Yes, many Califorians LOST their jobs because they didn't want to move, but yet many Jerseyites GAINED jobs because of it. It all depends on your perspective.
When I think about my grandparents and how they sat in the bowels of a ship to get to a place that even HAD jobs, I realize how spoiled many Americans are.
Since it's a bigger problem in many countries than it is here, do you think that governments like China and Mexico have implemented foolish policies to send jobs outside the country, too?
Renee
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