The Pros and Cons of Outsourcing

Running Head: The Pros and Cons of Outsourcing

The Pros and Cons of Outsourcing

By

Daniel Sweitzer

Webster University

PROC 5000

Abstract

Outsourcing has become a big deal in our economy and has become more controversial in the last decade, precisely with the recession of 2007-2009. With many Americans losing their jobs month after month (more workers lost their jobs during the recession than in any previous economic downturn since World War II, according to the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistic), (2014) people have been starting to wonder why a major economic country like the United States was cutting jobs so abruptly and soon public attention pointed the finger to outsourcing, in particular offshore outsourcing, as the new evil, the root cause of the lack of jobs available. Although encouraging signs of recovery have started to appear, and companies are back hiring people once again, there is still a long way ahead before saying that we are completely out of danger. Outsourcing has been a subject of interest that has been brought up numerous times by economists as one of the leading causes for the skyrocketing unemployment level that we have seen in the past few years, which peaked at 10 percent in October 2009 (U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics, 2014) although by then the worst part of the recession was over.

Americans now understand the implications behind it and, although they enjoy paying a cheaper price at the store, they start realizing that no jobs equal no money to buy anything anyway, therefore they are really starting to thinking that paying a higher price for an item is preferable to risk losing job opportunities due to lack of them. Some economists’ dispute that bringing jobs back home to the United States would risk increasing the price of goods and so voiding those slight increases in the general economy. Some of the common used goods are now at a fraction of the price we used to pay, as it should be due to the cheaper labor costs from...