The tech industry has a terrible reputation for taking local jobs and sending them overseas. After all, labor is cheaper in some other country.
Labor was cheaper in some other country.
As the world educates itself and raises its standard of living, the cost of exporting jobs is catching up. Don’t believe for a second that this change means that those jobs are returning. They aren’t. Instead, they’re being replaced by automation.
This change shouldn’t be surprising to anyone. The big corporations are always looking for cheaper labor, which helps pad their bottom lines and keeps the stockholders happy. That’s sad because it’s the customer who gets shafted; automated anything — especially support — isn’t better than having a person involved.
True, some tasks can be automated effectively without any loss of quality. That situation has been inevitable since the industrial revolution. However, quality isn’t the issue here; it’s making money.
I also see an impact with regards to the minimum wage in the US. While I support indexing the wage to inflation, raising it too much prompts business owners to replace low-wage workers with automation. This trend may snowball in the coming years as consumers tolerate more automation and the corporations condition us to accepting crummy service.
