Report: Offshore IT outsourcing helps economy. Shipping software and services tasks abroad is boosting the country's figures for its gross domestic product, overall employment and wages, according to a trade group. [CNET News.com]
How about this for irony? In 1998-1999, the ITAA (an organization representing the company side) was lobbying hard for wider use of "green card" immigrants to fill what it called a shortage of IT jobs. Evidence cited was the relationship of graduates in computer science to total jobs. Of course, many IT professionals have degrees other than computer science, so the argument was less than convincing to anyone other than themselves and politicians.
Now, the organization is trying to say that instead of importing the workers, we'll send the work to them. In other words, the message is the same. "We don't value our IT workers as highly as we once did."
The argument is that productivity boosts our economy. However, productivity just means that fewer people are doing more work. And, even though the report says that this leads to higher wages, that is not something that a lot of people see. They also don't say where these new jobs that are created are, and whether they are positions available for the recently displaced, or whether they are the infamous "Wal-Mart greeter" jobs.
Sounds more like a quasi-study (of which we see way to many these days on all sides of an argument) intended to generate a little positive publicity and shore up the political support.
12:55:52 PM 
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