Outsourcing

As our economy moves more and more into the digital age and away from the industrial age, placing a customer service call regarding your electronic or digital equipment, or trying to place an order by phone, has a higher and higher chance of linking a U.S. customer to a foreign off-shore call center. This means your chances of being connected with someone in countries like Romania or India, where many U.S. jobs are being outsourced to, are quite high. Beginning with manufacturing jobs being outsourced, the United States continues its march into the information age with increasing numbers of technical and white collar jobs being sent out of the U.S. and resulting in our own domestic employees being left behind and jobless.

United States employers are outsourcing primarily for cheaper labor in order to reduce costs, a competitive and survival tactic in need more now than ever with our economy in one of the largest recessions experienced in decades. With sales declining, companies are forced to trim costs to avoid going under or bankrupt. Therefore, when a person operating phones in India earns under $1 an hour, and other jobs reflect similar cost savings where workers with the same skills earn a fraction of what American do, it seems to be an obvious solution for making significant cost cuts. Unfortunately this only adds to the growing ranks of unemployed in our own country. In December of 2008, the number of unemployed persons increased by 632,000 to 11.1 million and the unemployment rate rose to 7.2 percent and is predicted to keep rising. Since the start of the recession in late 2007, the number of unemployed persons has grown by 3.6 million and the unemployment rate has risen by 2.3 percentage points. Our U.S. company leaders are trying to rescue their organizations from financial failure by sending work over seas. This can be viewed as saving jobs versus the loss of all jobs within an organization due to the company closing down. That may be an...