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Belying the common belief that shifting IT
jobs to countries like India is a threat to workers in the US, the
report states that IT job opportunities will grow in America because
cost savings achieved by outsourcing will help fuel new business
opportunities. This in turn will result in creating new jobs at
those organisations, according to a study by Association for
Computing Machinery (ACM), a professional development organisation
that includes academic, government and industry officials from the
information technology field. The study, entitled ‘Globalisation
and Offshoring of Software’ cites estimates that between two to
three per cent of IT jobs will be lost annually to lower-wage
developing countries through offshoring. Giving an example of the
deeply interconnected software industries of the US and India, the
report points out that India benefits from generating new revenue
and creating high-value jobs. The US, on the other hand, benefits
from having US-based corporations achieve better financial
performance as a result of cost savings associated with offshoring
some jobs and investing increased profits in growing business
opportunities that create new jobs. The study is also critical of
market research reports projecting widespread job losses to
offshoring. "The objectivity and quality of other data
sources, especially the data in reports from consulting firms and
trade associations, is open to question, as these organisations may
be serving their own agendas. Projections are always more suspect
than data on current employment levels," it said. The report
said the US IT sector’s overall growth should outpace that loss of
jobs, expanding opportunities for those trained in fields such as
software architecture, product design, project management and IT
consulting. In fact, IT employment in the US in 2004 was 17 per
cent higher than in 1999, and IT jobs are predicted to be among the
fastest-growing occupations over the next decade. And even with
greater globalization, the report notes that the lower wage scales
in India and China are not pushing down pay for US IT workers.
Citing information from the US Bureau of Labour Statistics, the
report said IT workers have seen steady gains in average annual
wages for different fields in the sector of between two to five per
cent a year. "We changed the world," said Moshe Y Vardi,
co-chair of the study group, and director of Computer and
Information Technology Institute at Rice University, "and now
it is changing us." — PTI
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