The process of globalization and outsourcing means that jobs are coming to developing countries. While developed countries may be losing jobs, developing countries are gaining them. These jobs are no longer just manual labor or factory work although these are still coming. Higher end "knowledge" jobs are also being outsourced. Basically any job that does not require face time with clients is at the risk of being outsourced.
Most economists generally view this as a net positive when looking at the system as a whole. Consumers in the developed countries get goods at a cheaper cost while people in the developing countries get gainful employment. What's not to like? The problem lies in the very factors that under-gird the process of globalization.
At the lower end of the job spectrum, workers face the constant threat of jobs moving to still cheaper locales. As a result, they become willing work under appalling, often unsafe conditions for exceedingly low "market" wages. The argument that they are nevertheless still better off than previously simply highlights their desperate poverty. The availability of cheap goods comes at a high human cost that is largely invisible to more well off consumers. The wages that these workers get generally allows them no better than subsistence living. This in turn hampers the economic development of the host country. Since domestic consumers are too poor to buy the goods that they help to make, companies do not have an incentive to produce goods for them which means that the foreign investment that comes in is geared towards the export sector while neglecting domestic needs. The only way to break this circle is if the host government takes active steps to mitigate these effects and promote domestic development. However, this is not an easy task since the foreign companies then threaten to shift jobs to other, more pliant governments. There is then the distinct possibility of thousands of workers being unemployed with the concomitant social problems; something that no government will contemplate with equanimity.
At the higher end of the job spectrum, middle class, "knowledge" workers face the same threat both in developed countries and in developing countries. The advances in logistics and communications technology that made it possible to outsource low end jobs are now doing the same at the upper levels. Basically, all back office work can be outsourced. This includes jobs that range from accountancy to engineering design to paralegal work to software creation and so on. All of this work was supposed to be the domain of developed countries but that ignores the fact that anyone can get the same level of knowledge while sitting anywhere in the world. Also, these jobs are much easier to move around than factory work. In the latter case, companies have to shut down physical plants and rebuild them elsewhere. For much knowledge work, all one needs is a computer and fast internet access. Now companies are in the happy position of being able to pit knowledge workers around the world against each other. This reduces the value of this work and lowers wages in these areas. So graduates in developing countries are not immune to the forces that brought them the higher end jobs; these same forces can easily shift such jobs into still lower wage areas.
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