Is American losing highly paid technical jobs, such as computer programming, due to outsourcing computer software and service
jobs overseas to India?
New programming jobs may be springing up in India, says Virginia Postrel, but they aren't cancelling out job growth in the United
States. Compared with the end of 1999 rather than the peak of the economic bubble that ended in the 2000-2001 recession
December 2003 data show a 14 percent increase in business and financial occupations, a 6 percent increase in computer and
mathematical jobs, and a 2 percent drop in architecture and engineering jobs.
Catherine L. Mann, an economist at the Institute for International Economics in Washington, argues that the
globalisation of software and computer services will enhance American productivity growth and create new, higher-value, higher-paid technical jobs.
This happened in computer hardware in the late 1980s when Asian manufacturers began turning out basic memory chips, undercutting American chip-makers' prices. Semi-conductor makers in the U.S. then shifted to higher-value micro-processors.
Mann estimates that:
Globalised production and international trade made I.T. hardware some 10 to 30 percent less expensive than it otherwise would have been.
U.S. gross domestic product grew about 0.3 percentage point a year faster than it would have otherwise, adding up to $230 billion over the seven years from 1995 to 2002.
By building the components for new integrated software systems inexpensively, offshore programmers could make information
technology even more affordable. And as in hardware, software systems integration jobs can replace those lost for basic programming.
Source: Virginia Postrel, The Trend of Vanishing Tech Jobs, Economic Scene, New York Times, January 29, 2004; Catherine L. Mann, Globalization of I.T. Services and White-Collar Jobs: The Next Wave of Productivity Growth, Policy Brief 3-22, December 2003, Institute for International Economics.
For NY Times text http://www.nytimes.com/2004/01/29/business/29scene.html
For Mann study http://www.iie.com/publications/pb/pb03-11.pdf
For more on Productivity & Technology http://www.ncpa.org/iss/eco/
FMF Policy Bulletin\10 February 2004