Wikipedia describes offshoring as "the relocation by a company of a business process from one country to another—typically an operational process, such as manufacturing, or supporting processes, such as accounting."
There is an alarming trend of companies that are locating plants in other countries due to the abundance of educated workers happy to be receiving pay at a fraction of an American worker. When you buy a PC these days it is probably assembled in China by an employee of HP or Dell. The only American involved with the purchase is the delivery man that brings it to your door.
The improvements in internet speed has enabled many jobs to be done remotely. In the past if a company was looking for a programmer they were dependent on the availability of local talent. Now the talent pool has exploded to be anyone, anywhere in the world with access to a high speed connection. Companies based in the US are employing workers located throughout the globe do just this.
The good news is that it has improved the cost margins of these companies and allowed them to keep cost down. The bad news is that these jobs are not coming back to the US. We have priced ourselves out of these types of jobs.
The other reality that Americans must face is that we are undereducated. We cannot keep spending less time educating our youth than other countries and be able to compete. It's time to wake up America and start valuing education, expand the school year and expand the school day. When we can start competing on education then we can start building a stronger workforce.
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