Robotic Nation Evidence

Tech execs look to expand--outside U.S.

This is not specifically a robotic article, but it does show how businesses behave when they have a cheaper source of labor available. From the article:

"Tech companies are seeing a rebound in business, but top executives said this week that any jobs added to meet growing demand will likely be in countries where labor is cheaper than the United States.

Executives speaking at the Reuters Technology, Media and Telecommunications Summit in New York said they see increased hiring in countries like India and China, but few jobs will be added in the United States.

Michael Jordan, chief executive of technology services provider Electronic Data Systems, said the company's employees in low-cost locations like India will rise from 9,000 now to 20,000 by 2006.

Bruce Claflin, chief executive of network products maker 3Com, said the company's joint-venture with Huawei Technologies of China will add 1,000 engineers, all supplied by Huawei.

Anne Mulcahy, chief executive of Xerox, which has about 40 percent of its 60,000 employees outside the U.S., expects little hiring. "I don't really think we'll be adding people the way we used to,''

In other words, as large U.S. technology companies grow in the future, they will not be adding any new employees in the U.S. All the jobs will be going overseas.

The same thing will happen as each new type of robotic technology starts to become available in the future. Companies will rapidly shed human workers in favor of much less expensive robotic labor.

The combination of offshore job loss and robotic job loss at approximately the same time means that unemployment rolls will saturate very quickly. We are seeing the leading edge of this trend in 2003/2004, which is why the job slump has lasted so long. See Robotic Nation for details.