Friday, August 27, 2004

ACM Queue - What Global Sourcing Means for U.S. IT Workers and for the U.S. Economy - The result is likely to be increased IT employment diffused thro

ACM Queue - What Global Sourcing Means for U.S. IT Workers and for the U.S. Economy - The result is likely to be increased IT employment diffused throughout the U.S. economy, especially in non-tech industrial sectors.

For the U.S. economy overall, the widespread use of IT and associated transformation of business activities translates into faster productivity growth. IT accounted for more than half of the acceleration of structural productivity growth in the U.S. in the 1990s, supporting both the robust GDP growth (4%) and low unemployment (3.9%) enjoyed by the U.S. economy in the second half of the decade. This performance was borne out at the sector level, with the sectors with the greatest investment in IT and the greatest number of IT workers also having the greatest productivity growth. Based on price declines from global sourcing, U.S. GDP in 2004 is some $230 billion more than it otherwise would have been, or about $2,000 for each working person in the U.S.

Software and IT services, the second wave of global sourcing. The U.S. is poised for a second wave of IT investment, growth in IT jobs, and productivity growth, as components of software and IT services are produced more cheaply abroad as part of an international value chain. A key source of the gains to capital investment, jobs, and productivity will come from the diffusion of IT into the sectors that did not take up IT during the 1990s.


Now that I am out in the real world, graduated and all, and searching actively for a new job this is certainly good news. However, the trend it seems is towards more Quality Assurance/Assistance type jobs, in the services market. Whats an avid developer searching for a dev job do, in a market that wants to outsource? I guess the good news is that you dont have to be working as a dev to be a dev. I am perfectly happy if I can get a day job that pays my bills so that I can come home and code in the wee hours of the night. The second wave is certainly coming... and this time I have a degree :)

Mozilla and hypocrisy

Right, but what about the experiences that Mozilla chooses to default for users like switching to  Yahoo and making that the default upon ...