Information technology jobs going south? Nope. East!
In the infancy of information technology, looking for information technology jobs meant responding to newspaper advertisements by ‘headhunters’ or companies directly advertising for IT workers. You might have also have found a listing at the local government jobs listing office, but these types of jobs were considered highly specialized, requiring special searches to find the right people.
That was in information technology’s infancy, way back in the 1980s and early 1990s. Since then, the IT field has grown and with it the quantity and variety of related jobs. Starting in the mid-1970s, computers were being embraced by businesses for the competitive advantage. As soon as computers proved their worth, helping a business claim the majority of its markets, the rush to automation was on! Information technology jobs became more abundant, but workers to fill those jobs were scarce. To answer the demand for IT expertise, colleges, universities and junior colleges instituted information technology courses and degrees. These traditional institutions were not able to produce IT workers fast enough, so information technology schools came into being. Even with technical schools producing IT workers, the demand could not be filled. These were the glory days of information technology jobs.
The scarcity of qualified IT workers became a real problem after the mid-1980s, when the microcomputer took center stage. Computers became affordable to most families, and young and old alike now had the opportunity to learn about the computer, its capabilities, how it works, how to set it up, how to use it and write software. The tool was available to nearly everyone, yet very few people opted to go into information technology. With businesses becoming fully automated in the 1990s, the number of unfilled information technology jobs shot through the roof.
While Americans slept, barely promoting information technology training in the schools, other nations, especially India, recognized that the demand for IT workers would only increase. American’s slow response to this growing job market was viewed by India as an opportunity. Throughout the nineties, India poured tremendous resources into IT schools and training, and by 2000, a new work force was ready to fill the jobs that had long gone to an American applicant. Before the American people realized it, Indian IT workers were flooding the field.
Pursuing the best interests of their corporations, the U.S. government relaxed immigration laws in order to allow these ready workers to fill the jobs. Before America knew it, the demand for American workers in IT fell rapidly. Corporations found they could pay less to Indian programmers working in the U.S. than for American citizens. By 2001, most information technology jobs were being ‘outsourced’ to this less expensive work force.
Today, information technology jobs are not as abundant as they were ten or twelve years ago. The pay is not as high as it was then. Unless Americans are willing to take the pay an outsourced worker would take, the jobs will continue to be filled by outsourced workers from other countries. Many old information technology workers call for government protection, but in a global economy, protection is not likely. Gone are the days when IT jobs were readily available, at least in America.