ITAA's Job Dream

Computerworld - Here's a comforting bedtime story: Offshoring won't just save companies money. It will also create jobs. And reduce inflation. And grow the economy. Those are the top-line conclusions of a new report from the Information Technology Association of America, the IT vendors' lobbying group.
Just don't read very far past that top line -- at least, not if you want to get any sleep tonight.
See, the report says those new jobs won't be IT jobs. And that reduced inflation will come in part from lower pay -- "wage compression," as it's charmingly dubbed by the report's principal author, Global Insight Inc. chief economist Nariman Behravesh.
And that economic growth depends on the willingness of the foreign employees who get our offshored jobs to spend their paychecks on U.S.-made exports.
Don't take my word for it. It's all in the report, brought to you by the people who, just a few years ago, were saying that the U.S. desperately needed to increase its IT workforce. Yes, really. Since early 2000, the ITAA has predicted the creation of more than 4 million new U.S. IT jobs -- 1.8 million of which would go begging because there just wouldn't be enough IT people to fill them.
How many new U.S. IT jobs have actually been created since 2000? According to the ITAA's own annual jobs report, maybe 400,000.
But wait -- according to this new report, since the dot-com bubble burst in 2000, a total of 372,000 software and IT services jobs have been lost in the U.S. (Only 104,000 were lost to offshoring; the rest went because of the recession, productivity gains and an end to what the report calls "overhiring.")
The new report also predicts that "in the software and services area, the economy will create 516,000 jobs over the next five years in an environment with global sourcing but only 490,000 without it. Of these 516,000 new jobs, 272,000 will go offshore and 244,000 will remain onshore. Thus the U.S. IT workforce will continue to grow."
So, let's do the math: Without offshoring, the U.S. gets 490,000 new IT jobs in the next five years, a net increase since 2000 of 118,000 U.S. IT jobs. With offshoring, the U.S. gets 244,000 new IT jobs -- a net loss since 2000 of 128,000 U.S. IT jobs. Some growth, eh?
Yes, there will be new jobs -- in education, health services, transportation, utilities and construction, all areas where the work can't easily be shipped overseas. They just won't be jobs in IT.