All Offshore That Are Going Offshore

About a year ago, the term "offshore" was used in the news to talk about oil drilling, and Governor Bush's inability to persuade brother President not to put oil rigs off the Florida coast — lest a spill damage our sacrosanct beaches and thereby harm tourism.

Today, "offshore" isn't an adjective or noun, it's a verb, as in "offshoring," meaning to move jobs out of the country. Either way, it seems President Bush is in favor of it.

Here's how this one works: find jobs that do not require face-to-face interaction (such as call centers, manufacturing, and other tasks that can be facilitated by the Internet). Consolidate those jobs, and move them to places such as India, where people can be paid significantly less to do the same work. To my understanding, one of the most common jobs moved so far has involved the mystery people who "monitor your call for quality assurance." One major local employer has done a sort of "reverse offshoring," consolidating payroll and HR transactional functions globally, but placing the people here in Florida. It's only a small step to move those jobs offshore, though.

Taken to the illogical extreme, though, let's presume that all of a given job is offshored — say, those HR transactions (changing your address on record, for example). The people who do it here today aren't going to move with the job. But when they continue to job hunt here, they will be left with jobs that require face-to-face interaction: retail, dining, and other service jobs with pay below the poverty line. At that level of pay, they can't afford the products and services of the companies doing the offshoring. Result: While the companies can save cost by moving some job functions overseas, they will also shoot themselves in the foot by reducing the market for their product.

Consider this: the rich who operate these companies will make more money off the short-term "savings," and the middle class will get poorer with the dearth of middle-class jobs. This scenario just serves to widen the developing class gap here at home. Illogical, and unlikely, perhaps. But it does seem to me that the companies doing offshoring are presuming no one else will, so there will still be plenty of consumers, consuming. Making presumptions of one's competition is, I would think, an unwise move at best.