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• Agence France-Presse: India's top IT body says outsourcing, research sectors faces skills crunch. Excerpt: India's top information technology (IT) body said India's booming outsourcing and IT research sectors face a looming skills shortage and the nation's universities must train students better to fill the gap. Kiran Karnik, president of the National Association of Software and Service Companies (NASSCOM), said the body had begun talks with IT firms, universities and governments about improving study courses to equip students for outsourcing and IT research jobs. ... NASSCOM said in a recent report that India's outsourcing industry was expected to face a shortage of 262,000 professionals by 2012. "One has to trigger the government to do more. It can help by introducing foreign languages in schools and also teach communication skills to students which will help them gain jobs in the outsourcing sector," Karnik said. Karnik's statements followed comments by Gartner, a top global IT consultancy, last month. Gartner said emerging nations in Southeast Asia and central Europe could eat up nearly half of India's 80 percent current share of the booming outsourcing market if the sector failed to draft a longterm strategy to stay ahead. US and other firms have made a beeline for India, drawn by its vast educated English-speaking workforce and labour costs much lower than in the West.



• Agence France-Presse: US to lose more than 400,000 jobs this year. Excerpt: The United States will lose more than 400,000 jobs this year to Mexico, China, India and other Asian nations as multinational corporations restructure operations and shift production overseas, a study showed. The number of jobs lost will be around double those three years ago, according to the study by Cornell University and the University of Massachusetts for the US-China Economic and Security Review Commission. The study came amid heated debate ahead of the November 2 presidential elections on outsourcing of jobs to China, India and other developing economies and its adverse impacts on employment at home.



• Christian Science Monitor: Endangered species: US programmers. Excerpts: Say goodbye to the American software programmer. Once the symbols of hope as the nation shifted from manufacturing to service jobs, programmers today are an endangered species. They face a challenge similar to that which shrank the ranks of steelworkers and autoworkers a quarter century ago: competition from foreigners. Some experts think they'll become extinct within the next few years, forced into unemployment or new careers by a combination of offshoring of their work to India and other low-wage countries and the arrival of skilled immigrants taking their jobs. ... Although computer-related jobs in the United States increased by 27,000 between 2001 and 2003, about 180,000 new foreign H-1B workers in the computer area entered the nation, calculates John Miano, an expert with the Programmers Guild, a professional society. "This suggests any gain of jobs have been taken by H-1B workers," he says. ... The H-1B visa has been highly controversial for years. This fiscal year, Congress set a quota of 65,000 visas, which was snapped up immediately after they became available Oct.1. Now, US business is pleading for Congress to let in more such workers. The US Chamber of Commerce, for instance, wants Congress to revisit the cap "to ensure American business has access to the talent it needs to help keep our economy strong." That rationale makes no sense to the Programmers Guild and other groups that have sprung up to resist the tech visas. Since more than 100,000 American programmers are unemployed - and many more are underemployed - the existing 65,000 quota is inexcusably high, they argue. H-1B and L-1 visas are "American worker replacement programs," says the National Hire American Citizens Society.
  • Linda Guyer comments. Full excerpt: There are actually tax incentives for companies to offshore jobs. The least the federal government could do is eliminate these incentives. Taxpayers (you and I) should not be subsidizing the loss of good jobs. At the state level, as well, governments could at least require that work paid for by state taxpayers should be performed in the U.S. The feds could also tax the importation of services, similar to the tariffs we have on imported agricultural products. I doubt this will ever be done, however, because programmers don't have a powerful lobby in Washington like agribusiness does. For all you believers in "capitalism and globalisation are inevitable" - the agricultural and cotton and other industries in the US have been protected by the government from foreign competition for years. I don't see anyone complaining about that?



• Computerworld: H-1B visa cap for FY '05 already reached. Never before has the cap been hit on the same day it went into effect. Excerpt: Vic Goel, an immigration attorney in Greenbelt, Md., said the quick closing of the cap means employers can't hire highly educated foreign professionals for nearly a year. "If we are making that educational investment, we need to reap the return of that investment," he said. But Russ Harrison, legislative representative for the IEEE-USA, said the visa program "creates a strong incentive to push down wages and discourages employment of American workers." The H-1B visa, which is heavily used by high-tech employers, allows skilled foreign workers to get jobs in the U.S. for up to six years. The number of H-1B visas was set at 195,000 for fiscal years 2001, 2002 and 2003 before dropping to 65,000 in fiscal 2004.



• Computerworld: India outsourcing firms report surge in hiring. Growth in IT employment overseas could lead to rate increases for U.S. customers. Excerpts: In a quarterly report released today, Wipro Ltd. said its workforce rose by nearly 18%, adding 5,546 employees in the three-month quarter that ended Sept. 30, to bring its total to 37,063. For the same period one year earlier, the company reported 24,500 employees. For the same period, Infosys Technologies Ltd. said this week that its workforce grew from 27,939 employees to 32,949 employees, also an 18% increase. One year ago, Infosys had 18,580 employees. For the same quarter, Tata Consultancy Services Ltd. said its head count had climbed nearly 12%, from 36,636 to 40,948. In June 2003, Tata reported 24,000 employees. "Bangalore today is like Silicon Valley was five years ago," said Lance Travis, an analyst at AMR Research Inc. in Boston. The growth in overseas IT employment is coming from demand from U.S. companies. Stamford, Conn.-based Meta Group Inc. said the use of offshore services by U.S. companies will grow at about 20% a year through 2008.



• UC Berkeley News: New look at U.S. employment outlook. Excerpts: The economy may be on the mend, but the strongest job growth is in positions paying the least, and long-stagnant wages are slipping, says a report released today (Thursday, Oct. 14) by a researcher at the University of California, Berkeley. Arindrajit Dube, an economist with the Institute of Industrial Relations, pored through recent U.S. household survey data to examine changes in job numbers and wage distribution in 440 employment categories in 2001, during the 2002- 2003 recovery period, and in the first eight months of 2004. In "Are Jobs Getting Worse?" Dube analyzes changes in the average wage, the distribution of wages, and the types of jobs that are increasing or decreasing. "What's growing versus shrinking in terms of jobs is important," said Dube. "Combined with a weak labor market, wages have been fairly stagnant during this recovery, and this year, they've actually fallen."He found that the growth of jobs paying at the bottom third of the market outpaced those paying at the middle by nearly 2 to 1, while there was a reduction in the number of jobs paying at the top third.

• UC Berkeley News: Investigative journalist Seymour Hersh spills the secrets of the Iraq quagmire and the war on terror
• New York Times commentary by Paul Krugman: Block the Vote.
• New York Times commentary by Bob Herbert: Paralyzed, a Soldier Asks Why.
• New York Times commentary by Paul Krugman: America's Lost Respect
• Fort Worth Star-Telegram commentary by Molly Ivins: And in other news … Excerpt: Forget the bull about "a middle-class tax cut" as a pre-election gift from Congress. The Urban Institute reports that the middle 20 percent of earners will get an average tax cut of $162 in 2005, but the top fifth of earners will get an average cut of $1,317. Same old, same old.