Sunday, May 11, 2008

The end of Outsourcing

The current ability to obtain skilled labor for cheap is short lived. This is for the following two reasons:
1. As foreigners become more confident in their ability to service more wealthy countries, they will raise their price to the point where it becomes questionable whether the low price compensates completely for the inconvenience of a gap in geography and language.
2. As the wealth of developing countries increases, local demand for services in those developing countries increases. As that demand increases, so will the prices of the services.

Hence, the current loss of American jobs to out-sourcing is short lived. Let's say that any society needs 3% of it's man hours for Data Entry. At present, those expensive Americans who used to do data entry are in danger of loosing those jobs to Indians, who can do the task almost as well, for a fraction of the price. However, if all of the Indians who are capable of doing data entry are working for Americans, who is supporting the Indian business that need them? The answer is that as the economies became more similar, the demand for services will also become more similar. Then, in the name of simple efficiency, the Indian data entry candidates will work for Indian companies, and the American data entry candidates will have their jobs restored.

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