Perfect Labor Storm 2.0

Jobs at risks for offshoring

According to a recent study published by CareerBuilder.com and Wharton School of Business, more firms are offshoring high-wage, high-skill jobs that were once thought to be immune to global competition.

Twenty-eight percent of employers reported more high-skill service positions are being sent overseas to third parties or foreign affiliates in need of management, technology and sales and marketing know-how. The majority of employers (69 percent) believe high-skill service positions are at equal or more risk of being offshored than low-skill jobs.

Examples of jobs companies plan to offshore:

• Computer programmers – 32 percent

• Software developers – 32 percent

• Customer service – 25 percent

• Systems analysts – 16 percent

• Sales managers – 8 percent

• Graphic designers – 8 percent

• HR personnel – 7 percent

• General managers – 6 percent

• Marketing personnel – 5 percent

Among industries, technology services, telecommunications, insurance, manufacturing, engineering, banking & finance, oil, travel, utilities and communications all reported higher rates for offshoring.

Read more about jobs being offshored

Job boom for workers with skills to compete

Skilled jobs remain unfilled as American workers fail to develop the necessary qualifications. According to Skills 2 Compete, a non-partisan campaign geared to ensuring our workforce competitiveness, every U.S. worker needs to have access to at least two years of post-high school education or training. This will enable Americans to fill the largest portion of jobs in the U.S. economy—the ones in the middle of the skilled labor market which require some training past high school, but not a four-year degree. THAT’s where the jobs are.

We’re talking welders, dental hygienists, laboratory technicians, plumbers, and other trades that can be learned at vocational and technical schools.

Here’s an astonishing fact from www.skills2compete.org: For every job requiring a bachelor’s or advanced degree, twice as many require more than high school but less than a four-year degree.

Sounds like a great way to ensure your future and avoid taking on crippling levels of student loan debt, doesn’t it?

Skilled workers needed, soon

"Labor market is weak now, but impending worker shortage will change that," says Marshall Loeb, the former editor of Fortune and Money, in a column posted to Marketwatch.com this past week.

Sound familiar? It is a drum I've been beating since 1999 when I first wrote about the Perfect Labor Storm.

In the column, Loeb notes:

In the next decade, the American professional work force will continue to age and shrink. The median age of the overall population and the labor force will increase as the majority of the baby boomers move into their 50s and 60s, and the oldest into their 70s. From now until 2015, workers aged 55 to 64 will be the fastest-growing segment of the labor force... Between 2003 and 2008, an estimated 24 million baby boomers will have left the active workforce, primarily from executive, administrative, and managerial jobs.

Read more about skilled worker shortages and the Perfect Labor Storm.

Inside the small world of skilled workers

Phoenix was swarming with call centers in the mid-1990s, and new communities quickly filled with the unskilled employees who staffed them.

Flash forward a few years, and these low-level jobs were all outsourced to India, where workers can do the same work for $2 a day. The unemployed call center workers then flocked into jobs as realtors, mortgage brokers and appraisers, fueling the temporary housing boom in Phoenix.

Now, in a stunning turnaround, these former call center workers are receiving collection calls from the Indian workers who took their jobs, asking them to make their mortgage, auto, and credit card payments. And  their real estate related jobs are fast disappearing, as the housing market crumbles.

Read more about skilled workers in high demand.

Job Losses and Job Hunting

We've seen article after article about companies cutting jobs so there should be a flood of job hunters out there.  Yet employers are still having trouble finding good employees.  To read more about the difficult search, check out Employers to search haystack at job fair

To read more about job losses, check out

AT&T to cut about 4,600 jobs, sees $374M Q1 charge

Harley-Davidson cuts 8 percent of workforce

Citi posts loss, cuts 9000 more jobs

Is Training Anything More Than Putting Lipstick on a Pig?

I just received notification of a new blog and this post immediately attracted my attention. Training is offered as a solution to the skilled worker shortages.  Unfortunately, as the post suggests,

Even when employees are fortunate to learn new skills in a training course, they are often rendered useless when employees leave the cozy classroom cocoon and return to their dysfunctional work environments.

To read more go to Is Training Anything More Than Putting Lipstick on a Pig?