Shulou(Shulou.com)11/24 Report--

On April 12, many American companies began to move some highly skilled jobs overseas. Analysts believe that the epidemic has convinced these companies that many jobs can be done remotely, a trend accelerated by labor shortages and rising wages in the United States.

The following is the translation of the source Pexels:

Early last year, one of Johnny Taylor's employees suggested to him that her technical position could be done anywhere. The employee wanted to leave Virginia and asked to telecommute in North Carolina.

"it dawned on me then," says Taylor. "

Instead of letting the employee work in another state, he outsourced her work to India, which could save his organization about 40% of labor costs.

During the outbreak, millions of Americans worked from home, and many traveled to places such as Boysie, Austin and Phoenix. Thanks to telecommuting technologies such as Zoom and Dropbox, companies have found that employees can work efficiently at remote locations.

In the past, when employees asked for a change in their working environment, looking for a bigger house or a lower cost of living, companies often agreed to telecommute, mainly to retain them in a highly competitive labor market.

Now, with labor shortages and rising wages getting worse, more and more companies are considering sending jobs overseas to alleviate the problem. A survey of senior US managers conducted by the Federal Reserve's Atlanta branch in August last year showed that 7.3 per cent of managers were moving more jobs overseas.

Deel, a human resources company, says the number of overseas recruits through its platform more than doubled last year. The proportion of telecommuting jobs has risen sharply since 2019.

Although few companies are moving jobs overseas, the trend is accelerating, and some economists see it as the beginning of a new era. According to Nicholas Bloom, an economist at Stanford University, about 10 to 20 per cent of US service support jobs are likely to be relocated overseas over the next decade, including software developers, human resources professionals and payroll administrators.

Moving office jobs overseas is nothing new. Cities such as Bangalore in India are already full of call centres. The change now is that more and more companies are moving highly skilled jobs overseas. The labor shortage means it is difficult for many companies to recruit in the United States, while the inefficiency of immigration and the lack of visas make it harder to recruit staff from overseas. As a result, overseas recruitment has become a solution.

"the period from 1980 to 2019 was the rise of manufacturing globalisation, then stagnated by trade wars," Mr Bloom said. starting in 2020, we will usher in an era of globalisation of services. "

Although there are challenges such as language barriers in moving jobs overseas, and it may be more difficult for dispersed teams to train new employees, Bloom believes that recruiting overseas staff will enable companies to cope with labor shortages in the United States and increase their talent stock. and reduce wages and ease inflationary pressures.

At the same time, the relocation of jobs overseas will further exacerbate weak demand in the US office market. It is also bad news for American highly skilled office workers whose wages have risen sharply in recent years.

But skilled workers in developing countries will benefit. In September 2021, Benci Ruiz, a programmer in Mexico City, received a job email from IBM, which she initially thought was spam. Now she works remotely as a mobile app developer, earning about $2000 a month (CTOnews.com Note: currently about 13780 yuan), about twice what she earns at her local company, with better benefits. She doesn't have to spend three hours commuting to and from work as she used to.

"I can have enough to eat and live, and I can also save and invest," she said.

Indy Banerjee, McKinsey's Asian outsourcing partner and head, says western companies are hiring more accountants and risk analysts in Bangalore. Taylor says he sees more and more companies outsourcing legal, financial and technical departments.

"there was a time when I would say, 'these jobs can't be done remotely,' but now I don't think so anymore." "the epidemic proves our point," Taylor said. "

Office outsourcing has spread beyond traditional destinations such as India, creating overseas Zoom cities. Deel says European companies are increasingly employing large numbers of skilled workers in cities such as Tbilisi in Georgia and Yerevan in Armenia. Latin America, which shares time zones with the US, is also benefiting.

CodersLink, a company that helps clients recruit outsourced skilled workers in Latin America, says the number of consultants from US companies has quadrupled in the past two years.

Q2 is a financial company based in Austin, Texas. Last year, the company outsourced about 90 jobs in engineering, product design, project management and other areas to Mexico. Kim Rutledge, executive vice president of human resources at Q2, said competition for high-tech workers in Austin was so fierce that it was difficult for companies to fill vacant positions. The epidemic has convinced company executives that many roles can be done remotely.

"as Texans, we spent a lot of time in Mexico, so we thought it was a good choice." Rutledge said.

After the departure of American employees, Q2 moved some jobs to Mexico, but most of the positions were created as the company grew. The company employs CodersLink to recruit Mexican workers to work for Q2, many of them in more developed cities, all over the country.

Currently, about 20% of Q2 employees are overseas, mainly in India and Mexico. "I expect this proportion to increase significantly in the next few years," Rutledge said.

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