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Where Are the Jobs?

By Jennifer Hicks

Certainly not in the lives of the 9 million unemployed Americans. And nowhere near the 1.7 million additional people who want work but who've been unemployed for so long, that they didn't ' actively' look in the past month

It was only a few years ago that headhunters scoured the ' Net for hidden resumes, hoping to find someone --  anyone --  they could hire. Not that long ago that recruiters called and called, upping their benefits packages and offering BMWs as sign on bonuses.

What happened?

Since March 2001, the United States has lost 2,700,000 jobs. Last month, 93,000 jobs disappeared. In the manufacturing and service sectors, August marked the 37th consecutive month of job losses.

So where did they all go?

To India, the Philippines, the Balkans, and other areas where labor is cheap.

From outsourcing to offshoring

Outsourcing was the word in the late nineties. Companies with too much work and too few workers contracted out to consultants, managers, computer whizzes, writers -- just about anyone who could do anything that needed to be done.

This year, the word is offshoring -- the process of moving jobs overseas -- a process which has cost us $9.5 billion in jobs, according to Forrester Research.

Next year, 1 in 10 technology jobs and 1 in 20 of all jobs will be offshored, according to Gartner, a research firm.

Over the next 12 years, Forrester estimates that more than 3.3 million jobs and $136 billion in wages will move offshore. Jobs most affected will be

• computer-related service jobs (473,000 loss)
• office support, including customer service, bill collection, and data entry (1.7 million loss)
• business operations, including accounting, tax preparation, and underwriting (348,000 loss)
• Managerial jobs (288,000 loss)

What happened?

The lowering of trade barriers is one contributing factor. Since the advent of the North American Free Trade Agreement almost 10 years ago, 735,000 textile and apparel workers in the United States have lost their jobs, according to some reports. Add when provisions of the World Trade Organization are factored in, that number rises.

Some say that the low value of Chinese currency is another factor. The value of the yuan is tightly controlled and it is not traded freely. This keeps the price of its exports low, so that it is cheaper for us to buy a refrigerator made in China than one made here.

But others suggest the yuan isn' t to blame. Rather, the cheaper labor available is. In China the national average of the hourly wage is $0.25. In India, it is $0.71, and in the Philippines it is $0.06 according to the latest statistics from the International Labor Organization.

And, given that much work can be done via phone and Internet, it' s easy to see the Midas-lure of moving jobs to other countries.

Silver Linings

Forrester's research indicates that some jobs are relatively secure. These include:

• doctors and nurses
• plumbers
• auto mechanics
• soldiers
• teachers
• day laborers
• utility workers

In addition, as a recent report by the American Immigration Lawyers Association points out, boomers are getting older and are starting to retire. They foresee that millions of new immigrants will be needed to fill their jobs . But they also note that while they expect 33 million low-skill jobs will be created in the next 10 years, only 10 million skilled jobs will be -- and that will take until 2020.