Wednesday, March 25, 2009
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Fewer IT Workers in the future

http://mikelipper.blogspot.com/2009/03/land-of-re-revisited.html

"I think we have seen the peak in percentage of the work force employed
in information technology. I have been writing for several years now
that IT as a percent of the work force will decline. I mean this world
wide: outsourcing just moves the jobs and temporarily makes it possible
for workers who are less productive to be competitive due to currency
and standard-of-living arbitrage.

"As the arbitrage declines, those workers are even more vulnerable to
technological obsolescence than their US-based counterparts. Call center
workers can be replaced by voice response systems. Low level application
programmers can be replaced by new software development tools.

"Agriculture, manufacturing, and now IT are characterized by continuing
technology innovation that increases productivity: more output from
fewer hours of labor. For the first 50 years of the IT industry, demand
increase so much faster than productivity that employment increased.
Demand is still increasing, but at a slower rate as the industry finally
has enough capacity to meet the demand and is no longer growing into
unfulfilled demand. Productivity growth remains high, and the balance is
now such that the need for workers is growing slower than the
population, or the economy as a whole."

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