US Jobs and outsourcing

President Obama's recent visit to India has also sparked lot of issues with jobs growth in US and jobs going to India in outsourcing. India raised lot of concerns about restriction on outsourcing work from US. Both the countries are right in their approach.

US needs to understand, either local workforce needs to be competitive not just technically but also economically. Off course there is big difference in standards of living but that doesn't mean there is so much difference which can't be off-set by productivity gains locally due to let us say better infrastructure and same timezone. Definitely, US education system is very good in terms of creativity, presentation and overall development. However, for some reasons it doesn't produce enough scientists and engineers.  Most of engineers/scientists still come from immigrant population.. Most of the master's degrees in US universities are still filled by non-US students. This does creates problem for local business. They simply can't hire good enough local resources and Visa's like H1 are getting costlier and costlier day by day. So what is option. Any medium or now a days even small business are looking at outsourcing as very much viable option. Especially with the collaborative tools like WebEx/Video-Conferencing and almost free voice calling it is getting easier to offshore work. There is abundance of qualified workforce available in countries like India and China and other emerging economies. This workforce is usually very enthusiast to deliver and prove their worthwhile along with being extremely cheap as compared to local workforce.

So, question is, what will local young generation do.. I guess, one option is that local workforce should be willing to move.. They should be even willing to work outside US where they can still command premium for their incomparable communication, managerial and other abilities. Slowly, I feel local workforce will have only one of these  options, either do high tech jobs, very low paying jobs or go abroad. In-Fact during one of my trip to Mexico some time back I did met one couple who were coming back after visiting their son in Mexico. Their son was doing great and enjoying his very first job in Mexico City.. and they were also proud of him and very excited to see their son's progressing career.

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