Jeremy wrote:
] According to the election-year bluster of politicians and
] pundits, the outsourcing of American jobs to other countries
] has become a problem of epic proportion.
]
] Fortunately, this alarmism is misguided.

This article brought to mind the famous observation that "there are lies, there are damn lies, and then there are statistics."

You see, I understand the value of offshore outsourcing. I honestly think its a great idea. However, there is a REAL problem with employment in the IT/Engineering industry. Its not a misguided "perception." People aren't confused. I have yet to find one single commentator who is willing to directly tackle the problem in the course of defending offshoring. I had high hopes for an article published in such an esteemed journal, but no, unfortunately this author pretends to address the issue by dancing around it with misleading statistics, and incorrect accusations (such as the whopper that everyone is comparing present employment figures with 2000).

So if we're going to play the statistics game, let me throw one into the ring:

"Offshoring, or the outsourcing of high-wage jobs from the United States to
lower-wage countries, is contributing to unprecedented unemployment rates
for U.S. electrical and electronics engineers (EEs) and other information
technology professionals. The EE joblessness rate rose by 47.6 percent in
2003 to a record 6.2 percent, compared to 4.2 percent in 2002. The 2003
unemployment rate for computer scientists and systems analysts reached an
all-time high of 5.2 percent." - IEEE-USA

If you cannot take this on directly and discuss the implications of it in the face of offshoring, then you cannot defend offshoring. By refusing to address this issue directly commentators are doing themselves a disservice. You cannot convince someone who is unemployed that there is no jobs problem. By claiming that the problem doesn't exist you are arguing that the world is square. You're going to loose every time.

RE: The Outsourcing Bogeyman