In The News

Outsourcing Debate - Part I

Rafiq Dossani February 25, 2004
The steady outflow of jobs, especially white-collar ones from the US is emerging as a major issue in the US. In part one of our three-part series on the outsourcing debate two scholars explain the reasons. In recent years, US manufacturing jobs have declined as corporations looked for cheap labor overseas. Still, it was long assumed that service work would provide continued growth for the US and...

Asylum Applications Down 41%

Matthew Tempest February 24, 2004
The number of asylum seekers to the UK has dropped since last year due to governmental reforms, according to David Blunkett, the UK's Home Office Secretary. Asylum seekers, once a contentious issue in British politics, now seem to be overshadowed by the uncertainty of migration from new members of the European Union. Many in Britain worry that citizens from the former Soviet countries will...

A Fair Globalization: Creating Opportunities for All

February 24, 2004
A new report issued by the World Commission on the Social Dimension of Globalization acknowledges that globalization's "potential for good is immense," but points to record unemployment levels as a sign that globalization has not met the majority of men and women's "simple and legitimate aspirations for decent jobs and a better future for their children." The...

Trade Is Not Bad For US Jobs

Martin Wolf February 24, 2004
Financial Times Senior Economist Martin Wolf defends outsourcing as a means for companies to improve productivity, just as free trade benefits businesses by giving them access to cheaper goods from the developing world. He argues that the only reason politicians are railing against free trade, instead of praising gains from innovation and productivity, is because they can use foreigners as...

Programming Jobs are Heading Overseas by the Thousands

Stephen Baker February 23, 2004
Future computer programmers in the US and India are approaching vastly different thresholds. As US software programmers' career prospects are dwindling, Indian tech graduates see futures "brimming with optimism." In the past three years, the number of jobs offshored from the US has nearly tripled, and economists predict that one in ten tech jobs in the US eventually will move to...

Meet the Zippies

Thomas L. Friedman February 22, 2004
Wearing clothes other than the traditional Indian outfits, India's youth of today have become the first generation in the country to welcome global trade and the western jobs that come with it "with a zip in the stride." In this column in the New York Times, Thomas Friedman shows us the "zippies" phenomenon in India's many big cities like Bangalore. With 54% of the...

U.S. Payrolls Change Lives in Bangalore

SARITHA RAI February 22, 2004
As more and more Indian youths pour into the country's big cities like Bangalore to find jobs outsourced from the developed world, they are earning more and are becoming increasingly influenced by western culture. With 54% of country's population under the age of 25, says this article, the gradual cultural change of this generation is likely to lead changes to the larger Indian society...