The future of new IT job creation is bleak. Over the past decade 1.5 million IT jobs have been lost to US employees with 311,000 of those jobs lost just last year. The attrition is expected to diminish over the coming years but there is no denying the fact that IT outsourcing is responsible for many of the IT layoffs. Improved global IT infrastructures and upward trends of automation are all affecting the corporate IT departments across the country. And what is startling is that some of these IT unemployment statistics do not include IT service providers such as IBM and HP.
Some of these jobs are being outsourced offshore to organizations in India, Mexico and Russia who are doing their best to emulate IBM and HP. The tasks that previously required large numbers of employees such as help desk, data center operations, disaster recovery, and programming are now being fulfilled offshore. With the birth of broadband there is no need to provide local services of this nature, service providers like mycricket.com are providing high speed broadband service at lower cost.
The bright side of this coin is that Corporate America is struggling with these decisions as outsourcing base level jobs affects their ability to find talented employees to climb the ranks to mid and upper management. Plus the United States still remains at the top of the most skilled in Information Technology and onshore outsourcing remains to be a viable option for US companies.
Customer service will always be the number one decision for companies who value quality. Onshore outsourcing allow for highly important face to face meetings, a stronger understanding of US business practices and good ole American work ethic which leads to stronger productivity. There will never be a substitute for strong communication skills and similar cultures understanding the needs and goals of the project and how it will improve productivity to the corporate customer.