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U.S. Companies Increasingly Hiring Overseas, Not At Home

Staff Reporters |
April 19, 2011 | 7:24 p.m. PDT

Cisco tattoo. From Flickr user simonov.
Cisco tattoo. From Flickr user simonov.
Looking for a job with a major American company? You might have better luck if you move to India first. Data from the Commerce Department released Monday shows that in the past decade, multinational U.S. companies decreased domestic employment by 2.9 million workers, while they added 2.4 million jobs in other countries, the Huffington Post reports

According to The Wall Street Journal, business hardware and software maker Oracle hired twice as many employees abroad in the past five years as in the U.S.

The reason? Companies can find foreign workers who have better skills and demand lower wages than Americans:

"For large American multinationals, the geopraphical calculus is simple: Follow the money.

[The report] is not surprising at all. It is harder and harder for companies in the U.S. to find the right skilled labor at the right price point," said Dave Niles, president of SSA &Co, a global operations consulting firm."

The trend is great for high-tech firms like Apple and Cisco, who can offer lower-priced, quality products while tapping into emerging markets.

However, it's not so great for the American middle class, who face fewer well-paying jobs, even as the economy rebounds.



 

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