Smasharoo wrote:
Yeah, those 14 million software development jobs that were moved to India don't count, naturally.
http://www.haas.berkeley.edu/news/Research_Report_Fall_2003.pdf
Sometimes the amazing thing is that I think you actually BELIEVE that it soemthing doens't happen to you personally, it's not happeneing to anyone.
Um... Where did you see anything about 14 million of any jobs, much less 14 million software developer jobs? I looked through the document, and the numbers aren't anywhere near that figure.
Let's see. Page 2. The section called "The New Wave: Outsourcing of While Collar Jobs"
"While it is difficult to estimate the exact number of jobs created in these countries in these sectors, let alone those transplanted and created by US firms, tentative evidence collected by the authors suggests that business process outsourcing and software outsourcing have together generated, at the very least, over a million jobs in the 1990s and hundreds of thousands more since the turn of the century"
Um... That's total job *growth* that may or may not be from US jobs leaving the US, in both business process *and* software, to all countries outside the US (not just India), over 13 years. Exactly when did these 14 million software development jobs leave the US and go directly to India? What crack are you smoking here Smash?
Oh Lookie! Page 3 has a table. Numbers are in thousands (their numbers. I converted them here). There's a whole bunch of numbers there, showing numbers in each job sector (US) in Q1 2001 and again in Q2 2003. Then there are percentage numbers given for the difference.
Hmmm... The *total* of "at risk" businesses in 2001 was 6,853,900 (that's total employed in the fields they're tracking). In 2003, that number dropped in total to 5,791,800. Making a difference of 1,062,100 between those two years. Um... That's total of all jobs (alot of which are support, and manufacturing, and tons of other stuff that has nothing to do with SW development).
Again. Where the hell did you get 14 million of a single type of job going to a single country from the US?
If you're going to use a paper to support yourself, at least take the time to *read* it and see what it says first instead of just making numbers up.
Oh. It's interesting to note that the biggest drop in the US "at risk" industries on that chart both in raw numbers and percentage was in the "Manufacturing: Computer and Electronic parts" catagory, with a whopping 446,200 jobs leaving in that sector alone (a big chunk of the totals). Um... That's manufacturing. I'd also hardly call that skilled labor. Have you ever seen an electronic part manufacturing plant? Not a whole lot of brain power involved. This is the car lines of the 70s reborn again. Nothing else.
More interesting is the grand totals at the bottom of that chart, which presumably includes all industry and not just the "at risk" ones (presumably picked because those are the ones with negative numbers).
Manufacturing jobs went down by 14.2%
Nonmanufacturing jobs went *up* by 1.1%
Hmmmm.... Interesting isn't it? Not surprising that a couple people from Berkeley can take raw data like that and twist it into an epidemic of jobs loss to other countries. Even less surprising that you'd buy it hook line and sinker...
Edited, Mon Jan 19 17:14:49 2004 by gbaji