Remember about two years ago when all the high-tech jobs were going to go to India? Some of us called this a foolish fear that showed a misunderstanding of trade. Others (PC Roberts and Lou Dobbs, to take two examples) said that no, outsourcing had put the US economy on the brink of a precipice—our very standard of living was in doubt.
A New York Times editorial takes note of the latest study of the high-tech sector:
The outsourcing of computing work overseas may not be as bad as you
think. In fact, it probably isn’t bad at all. Consider one recent study
that says the problem isn’t so much the competition from high-tech
workers in places as far-flung as India and Romania as it is the
discouragement caused by the doomsayers themselves.The
Association for Computing Machinery, the professional organization that
issued the report, says that there are more information technology jobs
today than at the height of the dot-com boom. While 2 to 3 percent of
American jobs in the field migrate to other nations each year, new jobs
have thus far more than made up for the loss.
Economists 37, Doom-and-gloomers, 0.
