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or will it be the year we realise it's not really an issue after all? E-mail to a friend Printer friendly Reader Comments Post your comment here How big a deal is offshoring? Depends who you ask. Research firm Gartner published a study Monday saying it "isn't as widespread as people think", with lower-cost locales accounting for less than three per cent of money spent on global information technology services this year. Gartner projects that figure to grow but remain a relatively small fraction of total spending. By 2008, spending on IT services delivered through "global sourcing" will reach about...

NEW YORK - I was just out in Silicon Valley, checking in with high-tech entrepreneurs about the state of their business. I wouldn't say they were universally gloomy, but I did detect something I hadn't detected before: a real undertow of concern that America is losing its competitive edge vis-à-vis China, India, Japan and other Asian tigers, and that the Bush team is deaf, dumb and blind to this situation. Several executives explained to me that they were opening new plants in Asia - not because of cheaper labor. Labor is a small component now in an automated high-tech manufacturing...

Frank Hayes' fears about techies bailing out of a declining American IT workforce are already being realized ["ITAA's Job Dream"]. I've done it. I concluded that IT is largely a dead-end career for Americans and opted out so that my wife could pursue advanced degrees in education and move up in a field that can't be so readily outsourced or filled by guest workers. I rebelled at my former employer's "wage compression," outsourcing and use of H-1B and L-1 visa holders. One year ago, I resigned my IT job at NCR Corp., a Fortune 500 company based in Dayton, Ohio,...

Silicon Valley is suffering a brain drain that is just going to keep getting worse. Historically the valley has been the beneficiary of brain drains from around the world. The diaspora of China, India, Russia, etc, all came to sunny California to start their companies and make their fortunes. Companies like Juniper, Q-Logic, Exodus , and Silicon Labs are among the hundreds of companies that have generated billions in sales and wealth started by the best and brightest from around the world. Now some of those great minds are packing up and heading home. I spent the first week of...

<p>The cost of workers' compensation insurance, health care and employee recruitment -- along with burdensome laws and regulations -- are making life miserable for many Silicon Valley firms, according to a survey to be unveiled during Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger's San Jose visit Thursday.</p>

<p>Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger likes to say that if he could sell some of his movies, he can surely sell California. But even if he succeeds in getting the major workers' comp and regulatory reforms he wants, California's business climate and its overall job picture will need a lot more attention.</p>

Outsourcing: The calculus of migrating jobs Erika Kinetz IHT Saturday, December 6, 2003 Symptom or cure? The outsourcing of jobs to lower-cost locations is not new, but it has a chilling new adjective: professional. Advances in communications technology have enabled white-collar jobs to migrate to the developing world as never before - a phenomenon that has provoked an outcry from sectors that had thought themselves invulnerable. Money Report convened a round table of experts at the Algonquin Hotel in New York last month to explore how job migration is changing the global landscape, and what those changes might mean for...

The spin-meisters are hard at work proclaiming the long awaited healing of the US labor market. Jobs have now been up for four months in a row, and many of the so-called leading indicators of future employment growth -- jobless claims, work schedules, and purchasing managers’ hiring intentions -- are flashing green. And so the verdict has been rendered: At long last, the great American hiring machine is finally shifting gears -- marking a critical turning point for the US economy on the road to sustainable recovery. I don’t buy it. As I read the US labor market, there is...