Everyday we get hit with business news that just seems to go from bad to worse. No doubt, the wall street crisis has manifested into a main street blood bath. For the moment, the economy seems to be hemorrhaging thousands of jobs, and it may get worse before it gets better. However, as bad as it all seems, I believe there may be some mitigating factors that just might help stem the losses and provide hope to a beaten down economy.
First, it’s hard for me to imagine that companies will continue to put jobs offshore when this country is being hammered with unemployment that could reach 10% sometime next year. On the other hand, it very easy for me to see Congress making it a condition of any company receiving government assistance that they will bring jobs back stop sending any jobs across any ocean. This will stop any possibility of a company taking your tax dollars and then moving your job overseas. That would just be rude. The November 10 article, Outsourcing crisis in the Economic Times beautifully illustrates the point.
Secondly, the inevitable regulations that will thrust upon corporate America, especially in the financial sector, will make SOX or Patriot Act look like the forward in “War and Peace”. The I.T. effort alone will create 1000’s of jobs and lots of headaches for executives. The November 12 article in InfoWorld, New Regulations Will Soon Swell IT Workloads really explains the situation well.
Third, overseas jobs will come back because of economics, not government mandates (well maybe a couple). To the extent that companies receive tax breaks to set up overseas, well, they can kiss those goodbye. In addition, I’d be very surprised if tax breaks weren’t created for companies that hire domestically. However, these jobs will come back predominately because companies aren’t saving that much overall, coupled with the fact that the domestic workers will find a way to work for less, and become much more competitive. How will they be able to work for less? They’ll move to lower cost areas and work from home.
Working from home and the lifestyle improvement that provides will be the trade off workers will make for the reduction in income they will have to endure. However, people moving from high cost areas like San Francisco or New York into lower cost jurisdictions may find that their income in real dollars may not decrease that much (if at all), and their quality of life may vastly improve. From the corporate perspective, the shifting of overhead costs like real estate, electricity and even furniture to the employee or contractor will be an unanticipated boon to their cost structures.
I’m not just making this stuff up. We’ve actually implemented the model (we call it the “Homeland Onshore Model” or HOM) using mainframe resources and it works very well. In fact, we’ve saved our clients between 40% and 50% using the model. We don’t see any reason why it couldn’t work for any Knowledge discipline, such as finance, accounting or marketing.
As a friend pointed out to me today, America shines it brightest when are backs against the wall. Creativity in troubled times as always been our strength, and it will be no different this time around.
The solutions are out there, and the jobs aren’t far behind.
If you’d like to know more about HOM, or if you’d like to be considered for job that utilizes the HOM, please visit our website at: www.ITOnshore.com, or send your resume to: resumes@ITOnshore.com
